


Harry Potter and the Nest of Snakes

by elumish



Series: Creatively Maladjusted [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Gen, Slytherin Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-11 17:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 66,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7900834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You killed wizard Hitler?” she breathes, and Harry shrugs uncomfortably. “That’s so cool.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first couple chapters of this will be moderately boring and drawn very heavily from the book, especially dialogue-wise, but it will diverge much more in Chapter 3, though the general plot will follow Book 1 fairly closely.

Harry is thrilled. He’s stumbling a little coming out the wizarding bank, his legs feeling shaky and trembling, his heart pounding in his chest. He’s pretty sure he’s grinning. He’s heard about roller coasters before, seen pictures, and he thinks that maybe that is what one feels like.

Hagrid, on the other hand, looks nearly green. “Might as well get yer uniform,” Hagrid tells him, gesturing towards a shop that apparently sells robes. That’s what it said on the letter, as well, though he doesn’t understand why they want children to wear robes for school instead of trousers. “Listen, Harry, would yeh mind if I slipped off few a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts cars.”

Harry isn’t sure how he can argue, and Hagrid does look rather sick, so Harry nods, watching Hagrid head off before walking into Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions alone. His heart is pounding again, though this is not in excitement but nervousness. The woman who greets him is short, dressed robes of a light purplish color. He hopes he doesn’t need to buy robes of that color; his classmates would never let him live it down.

“Hogwarts, dear?” she asks with a smile before he can even open his mouth to speak. “Got the lot here—another young man being fitted up just now, in fact.”

Harry looks towards where she’s pointing to see a blond boy his age being fitted in, Harry sees with some relief, a black robe. The woman leads him over to a footstool next to the boy, pulling a mass of black cloth over his head and starting to pin it.

“Hello,” the boy says. “Hogwarts, too?”

Harry nods. “Yes.” He has the sudden thought that Dudley won’t be at this new school to make sure Harry has no friends, and so maybe this boy can be his friend. “What’s your name?”

“Draco Malfoy. You?”

“Harry.”

The boy doesn’t react to his name as the men in the pub had, which Harry is glad for, because he doesn’t want that fuss and mess again. All those eyes on him, it made his skin crawl. “My father’s next door buying my books and Mother’s up the street looking at wands.” He eyes Harry, who wants to fidget with the robe that’s being hemmed around him. “What about you? Where are your parents?”

Harry doesn’t want say that they’re dead, because it will either make the conversation awkward or make the boy feel sorry for him, and he doesn’t want either, because maybe he can be friends with this boy. So he just gestures towards the street outside the shop, figuring it’s not quite a lie because he doesn’t know where his parents are buried but they’re not inside the shop and hoping the boy doesn’t question him about it.

He doesn’t, instead asking, “They’re like us, right? They’re _our_ kind?”

“They’re, uh, witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean.” He can’t think of what other kind both he and Draco would be, because Draco sounds posh and rich, and even with all of that gold in Harry’s vault he most certainly isn’t.

Draco opens his mouth, and then the door opens and they both look over to see a tall blond woman who looks elegant and beautiful and like what he imagines a Lord’s wife to look like. Draco’s face lights up. “Mother.”

“I expect you are finished with this now.”

The woman pinning Draco’s hem waves her wand, then stands, nodding. Draco hops off the stool, turning back to look at Harry. “Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose.”

Harry nods and smiles, quite liking that idea. The woman gives him an odd look, not quite a sneer, then touches Draco’s shoulder, and the two of them walk out of the shop. Watching them, briefly, Harry has the thought that he would want a mother like that, to touch him on the shoulder and fetch him from shops so he doesn’t have to be there alone. But then he dismisses that idea, because people like him don’t get mothers, and it’s not worth wishing for something that will never happen.

What he does get, though, is a beautiful white owl as his first ever birthday present—or second, he supposes, if he counts the cake Hagrid gave him, or third if he counts Hagrid showing up in the first place. And nobody stares at him there, either, because Hagrid doesn’t say his name, and he’s glad to not have to deal with that here.

Perhaps nobody at school will know about what he’s supposedly done. If they’re his age, they won’t remember it, and he can’t imagine the teachers wanting to treat him special. Teachers never do.

So hopefully they’ll all ignore it and he can be just Harry. Not a freak. Because freaks don’t get friends.

He likes the feeling of the wand in his hand, though, and it’s the first time that all of this really feels real. Because the bank, the robe shop, even the owl, that could all be explained away as some sort of dream, but the way that that little stick feels in his hand like there’s something coming from him, like there’s power inside of him, that he couldn’t dream up.

And so maybe all of this might be real. Maybe he’ll be free from the Dursleys, at least for a few months, and he’ll be somewhere new, somewhere different.

Leaving feels equally odd, everything in the real world blurring past like it’s not quite there, because there’s this whole other world underneath it, or beside or, or inside of it, all of these people with magic that you can get to through the wall in a pub, and isn’t that bizarre. And more bizarre, he’s one of them.

If his mother was one, though, he wonders why Aunt Petunia or Dudley aren’t ones, though maybe it skips some people.

Sitting there, eating his hamburger during the best but oddest birthday of his life, Harry tells Hagrid, “Everyone thinks I’m special. All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr. Ollivander…but I don’t know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things? I’m famous and I can’t even remember what I’m famous for. I don’t know what happened when Vol-, sorry—I mean, the night my parents died.”

Hagrid leans across the table at him, and there is a very kind smile on his hairy face. It might be the kindest smile Harry has ever seen.

“Don’ you worry, Harry. You’ll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you’ll be just fine. Just be yerself. I know it’s hard. Yeh’ve been singled out, an’ that’s always hard. But yeh’ll have a great time at Hogwarts—I did—still do, ‘smatter of fact.”

Harry stares at him for a while longer, eating the rest of his hamburger slowly, savoring it because he doesn’t know when he’ll get food like this again, and he doesn’t know what to say. Because he just wants to cry that he doesn’t want to be singled out, that someone else can have it. Give it to that boy with a mother and a father. Give it to someone who wants him, and give him his parents back instead.

But there’s nothing Hagrid can do about it, and so Harry doesn’t say anything else.

Hagrid gives him his ticket before putting him on the train to go back to Little Whinging, and Harry wants to beg him to stay, but he doesn’t. Instead, he presses his nose to the glass of the train and watches him go until he disappears from sight.

\--

The following month is one of the most unpleasant Harry could have imagined. He had thought it would be fun, Dudley with the pig’s tail that they haven’t yet figured out how to remove, too afraid to be in the same room as him and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon not shoving him back in his cupboard or shouting at him, but nobody has spoken to him in weeks, and he’s taken to talking to himself just to hear his own voice.

He talks to Hedwig, too, whose name he found from his textbook _A History of Magic._ He likes the owl, though he’s never heard of anyone having an owl before and despite the fact she keeps on bringing back dead mice.

His school books are interesting, though there are words that they use that he doesn’t know and doesn’t know how to look up. He keeps the Herbology book open when he reads the P0.otions book to try to find the ingredients it mentions. It’s hard, though, and he can’t find all of them, and most of them he forgets before he gets to the next page.

He wants to read all of the books, though, all of all of them, because he doesn’t want to look a fool when he first gets to school, but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do that because he has to spend so much time checking everything again and again.

History of magic he figures must be most important, because he’ll need to know how magic works, but it’s so long and dry that he keeps falling asleep while reading it, even if he does it while sitting on the floor instead of lying on his bed.

By the end of August he is only perhaps a third of the way into the history of magic book and has only gotten all the way through the Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook, though he doesn’t understand all of it.

He talks Uncle Vernon into taking him to King’s Cross Station, though he has a guess that that is as much because Uncle Vernon wants to get rid of him as anything else. Which Harry is fine with, because he wants to be rid of them just as much.

Once he’s at the station, though, it’s a time of panic, because Hagrid apparently forgot to tell him about this, about how you get to a platform’s a fraction, and the guard decides he’s a time-waster as soon as he mentions Hogwarts, so with only ten minutes until he’s supposed to be on the platform he can’t find, he isn’t sure what to do. He imagines himself spending the night at King’s Cross, sleeping on a bench with an owl on one side of him and his trunk on the other, with no way to get back to Surrey and no money.

But Hagrid said Hedwig could find him, so maybe he can send him a note and say that he couldn’t get to Hogwarts and could Hagrid maybe pick him up.

But before he can figure out how to actually do that, or whether he should start tapping the walls with his wand, he sees a group of redheads, and a comment about Muggles. He can’t imagine anyone else saying a word like that, and so he swings around and pushes his trolley towards them, heart pounding in his ears.

There are four boys that he sees, and a woman holding the hand of a girl, and as Harry watches the oldest marches towards platforms nine and ten, heading straight for the barrier between them. He doesn’t take out his wand, though, or say anything, or tap anything, and then a crowd of tourists swarms around him, and the boy is gone.

“Fred,” the woman says as though her son disappearing is a normal occurrence, “you next.”

“I’m not Fred, I’m George,” one of the twins says. “Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can’t you _tell_ I’m George?”

“Sorry, George, dear.”

“Only joking, I am Fred.” He takes off towards the barrier, his twin—George?—calling after him to hurry up, and then the Fred is gone and a moment later so is George, and Harry still has no idea how it’s been managed.

“Excuse me,” Harry says.

The woman turns and smiles at him. Her eyes go to Hedwig for a second. “Hello, dear. First time at Hogwarts? Ron’s new, too.” She gestures towards the only boy left, who’s tall and gangly with hands he looks like he hasn’t quite grown into yet.

It can’t hurt to say, so he nods. “Yes. The thing is—the thing is, I don’t know how to—”

With a smile, she explains how he can get through to the platform, and though running into a barrier and hoping he magically passes through seems absolutely barmy to him, he has no other option, so he runs towards it—

And finds himself in the middle of chaos on the other side, parents and children everywhere, a scarlet red steam engine on one side of him. There are animals everywhere, more than he has ever seen all together outside of a zoo, and he keeps one eye on the ground so as not trip over a cat winding its way around his feet.

The first few carriages are already packed, students hanging out of windows to wave to their parents, and so he pushes his cart down the platform, past a boy named Neville telling his gran that he’s lost his toad and a boy with dreadlocks showing off something in a box to a shrieking crowd.

Near the end of the train he finds an empty compartment and places Hedwig inside then tries to shove his trunk in. But it’s so large and heavy he can hardly lift the end to heave it all the way inside.

After the second time he drops it in on his foot hard enough that there’s no doubt he’ll have a bruise by the night, one of the twins he’d followed through the barrier offers, “Want a hand?”

“Yes, please.”

“Oy, Fred, c’mere and help.” That must be George, then, if he got the names right. He’s not sure the name of the other boy, or the girl who was with their mother, but maybe he’ll find out while they’re at the school. They seem friendly enough, at least.

The three of them manage to shove it up into the train, though he’s sweating and a little bit out of breath by the end of it. Shoving his sweaty hair out of his eyes, he mutters, “Thanks.”

They both nod to him, and then one of the twins—he’s lost track of which one—points at the scar on his forehead, asking, “What’s that?”

“Blimey,” says the other one. “Are you—”

“He _is_. Aren’t you?”

Harry’s not positive what he’s talking about. “What?”

“ _Harry Potter_.”

“Oh, him. I mean, yes, I am.” It sounds almost like a lie coming out of his mouth, which is absurd because it’s actually true. He _is_ Harry Potter. He’s just still not sure he understands why that matters so bloody much.

Before they can gawk at him anymore, though, their mother calls, and he ducks down in his seat so he doesn’t attract any more attention, peering out just enough that he can see them. Their mother is fussing over them, and for the longest time he’s thought he wouldn’t want to be fussed over the way Aunt Petunia warbles over Dudley, but maybe the way this woman is with her children, maybe he would like that.

Not that it matters, because it’s not something he’ll ever have. But maybe he’d like it.

The eldest is named Percy, he learns, and he’s apparently a prefect and proud of it. And then the twins announce who he is, and he feels absurdly a little betrayed, even though he had no reason to expect the twins not to say anything. They don’t know him; they don’t owe him anything. But it would have been nice to have at least one set of people in this bizarre new world who didn’t think of him just as…whatever he is.

That boy from the robe shop doesn’t know, he doesn’t think, but Harry doesn’t know when he’ll see him again, so that doesn’t really help anything.

The train starts moving abruptly, sending him jerking forward in his seat, and he looks out the window to see the girl and her mother waving before they disappear from view as the train picks up speed. Houses rush past, and he feels a rush of excitement. He’s free from the Dursleys, at least for a few months. Wherever he’s going has to be better than what he’s leaving behind.

The door opens next to him, and he looks over to see the youngest redhead poke his head in. “Anyone sitting there? Everywhere else is full.”

Harry shakes his head, and the boy sits down across from him. Harry sees him looking and then pretending not to look, and he wonders if this is what the rest of his life will be like.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of this dialogue is taken from the first book, though as little as I could manage. There'll be a lot less of that after this chapter.

Harry has been chatting with Ron for a while—and they’re in in the middle of an illuminating but moderately baffling conversation about a sport that you apparently play while flying, which sounds amazing but also unsafe—when the compartment door opens again and in walks the boy from the robe shop and two others who look mean but dumb as doorknobs.

Harry grins a little at the boy he knows. “Hi.”

“Is it true?” he demands. “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you say anything when we met?” Harry gives an awkward shrug, a little uncomfortable with the two other boys eyeing him aggressively. “Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle.” Ron give a short cough that may have been hiding a snigger, and Draco turned to stare at him. “No need to ask who you are. My father’s told me all about you and your blood traitor father.”

Harry isn’t sure what a blood traitor is, but all he can picture is a redhead Uncle Vernon taking a belt or maybe a wand to his blood. His family. That seems so much worse when someone can use magic. If Hagrid, who isn’t supposed to use magic, gave Dudley a pig tail, who can imagine what a fully trained wizard can do.

Draco turns back to Harry. “You’ll soon find out that some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.” He offers his hand, and Harry takes it and shakes.

“Thanks.”

Draco smirks at Ron, then says, “See you when we arrive, then.” He and his two friends turn and walk out of the compartment.

Ron sends a dark glare in Harry’s direction, face bright red. “What did you do that for?”

Harry blinks at him. “I…met him before and he seemed nice.”

“He insulted my family.”

Harry opens his mouth, then realizes he might have misunderstood something and closes it again, trying to figure out what to say. Ron sounds furious and is almost shaking. Finally, Harry asks, carefully, “Does your dad hurt you?”

Ron blinks at him, the anger dropping from his face to make way for confusion. “What?”

“Draco said he was a blood traitor. I thought that meant that he had…betrayed his blood.” It sounds kind of stupid when he says it aloud like that, but he can’t think of what else it would mean. “Like that he hurt you.”

“Oh.” Ron sits back in his chair. “No, it’s—my dad really likes muggles, you know. He’s kind of obsessed with them. And we’re pureblood, and some purebloods think that if you like muggles you’re…betraying the purity of your blood.”

“That’s stupid.”

Ron shoots him a small smile. “Yeah. I thought when you agreed with him, you…agreed with him. And a lot of purebloods look down on us because, well, we don’t have a lot of money.”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t care about that. I don’t have a lot of money, either.”

Ron gapes at him. “You—”

“I’m wearing my cousin’s castoffs, remember? And maybe I do now, but I don’t…know. I don’t care. You’re my friend.” Ron is still staring at him, and Harry starts to feel a little uncomfortable. “You are, right? I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to be—”

“Of course I want to be your friend.”

Harry grins at him. “Great. I’ve never had a friend before.”

\--

Harry’s first thought when he sees Professor McGonagall is that she could take on Aunt Petunia without breaking a sweat. She looks stern and unyielding and like a headmistress from one of those shows Aunt Petunia watches on BBC when Uncle Vernon and Dudley are out.

She’s explaining the Houses to them, the way the school works, but he’s only half-listening, because this is the biggest building he’s ever been in, and the oldest, and it’s glorious, and even if they tell him tomorrow that this whole thing was a mistake and he has to go back to the Dursleys, at least he’ll have seen it, and the ship, and the boats that move themselves.

Though it’ll be even harder for him, because he’ll have seen it. He’ll know what’s here, and then it’ll be gone.

Professor McGonagall leaves without explaining how the sorting actually works, so Harry turns to Ron, asking, “How exactly do they sort us into Houses?”

“Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but think he was joking.”

Harry’s heart jolts at the thought of a test, though if it’s just pain he can probably handle it. Magic, though—he doesn’t know any magic, and Ron’s spell on the train didn’t work so he can’t even use that, and he doesn’t know how any of this works.

And then there are ghosts, and he loses that fear in the middle of the thought of ghosts, and what if his parents are ghosts somewhere, floating around this school or floating around wherever they’re buried, and they’ve been wondering where he is and why he hasn’t visited them.

But before he can ask Ron, Professor McGonagall returns, saying, “Move along now. The Sorting Ceremony’s about to start. Now form a line and follow me.”

His legs feel like lead, but he falls into line with the rest of the first years, Ron behind him, as they troop through the doors and into the most magnificent room he’s ever seen in his life. There are almost unbelievably long tables filled with children in black robes, with a table in front full of adults. Laid out on all of the tables are golden plates and goblets, and he has a sudden surge of pity for whoever has to cook for and serve all of these people.

Every eye, it feels like, is on their line, and mostly to avoid them he looks up; the ceiling, so high up he can’t actually tell how high it is, is a black that’s velvety and soft like a cloudy night sky, but dotted with starts.

From next to him, the girl from the train—Hermione—whispers, “It’s bewitched the look like the sky outside. I read about it in _Hogwarts: A History_.”

Harry’s not sure if he read that, though he didn’t get through the entire book, but he finds it hard to believe that there’s actually a ceiling there as opposed to just the sky. Magic is incredible.

He looks back down just in time to see Professor McGonagall put a stool and a hat, dirty and frayed, in the front of the room. Aunt Petunia would hate it. That makes Harry like Professor McGonagall a little bit more.

Not that he has any idea what they’re going to do with a hat, because it is just a hat. He has the sudden wild thought that they’re going to have a pull a rabbit out of it, and maybe the girl who apparently read the entire _Hogwarts: A History_ could do it but Harry certainly can’t.

And then the hat opens what’s apparently a mouth and starts to sing.

Which is possibly one of the weirdest things Harry has ever seen in his life, and he met goblins running a bank while with a giant man.

Everyone starts clapping when it’s done, and then Professor McGonagall is calling up names and Harry is so unbelievably grateful to be in the middle of the alphabet so he gets to see it before he has to go up. The girl and the boy from the train are both sorted into Gryffindor, and Draco—the only person other than Ron Harry actually has really met—is sorted into Slytherin. Harry has the vague hope to end up in the same House as Draco and Ron, even though they don’t really seem to like each other much, but Ron’s going after him and he’s not really sure how the sorting works anyway. Because the hat doesn’t seem to say anything other than announce the name of the House, and the kids don’t seem to say anything either, and so maybe different people have different sorts of magic that work better in different houses, or something like that.

From what he can tell from the ties, at least, Gryffindor is red and Slytherin is green, so maybe Gryffindor people like setting fires and Slytherin people like growing plants. Though he’s not really sure what yellow would mean.

The room descends into whispers when his name is called, and he feels a sense of vague resignation to have people stare at him everywhere he goes as he heads up to sit on the stool.

There is a momentary sense of an endless sea of people staring back at him, and then the hat is lowered on to his head and everything goes dark.

“Hmm,” a voice says, and a second later he realizes it’s the _hat_. The hat is talking to him, but if he couldn’t hear the hat talking to the rest of them then they probably can’t hear the hat talking to him, which means it’s in his head. “Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes—and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting…. So where shall I put you?”

Harry grips the stool, and all he can think of is that he doesn’t care as long as he can have friends.

“Friends, eh?” Harry thinks of Draco, and it sounds like the hat laughs. “Well, he’ll certainly help feed your ambition. Perhaps even curb your self-destructive tendencies. Well, then, it’ll have to be SLYTHERIN!”

There’s a beat of silence as Harry pulls the hat off of his head with shaking fingers and sets it down on the stool. And then the Slytherin table erupts into cheers, and Harry grins at them as he hurries over to an empty spot next to Draco. The sound is almost deafening when he reaches it, but he still hears Draco says, “Knew you had it in you, Potter,” as he nudges Harry in the ribs. The girl across from him, who he thinks is named Pansy, gives him a calculating smile.

When he looks up at the High Table, he sees Hagrid sitting near the end, looking unhappy, and he feels an uncomfortable lurch in his stomach, because he’s already made the only adult who gives a damn about him dislike him. In the center of the High Table sits a man Harry recognizes as Professor Dumbledore, who’s watching him with a twinkle in his eye. Harry smiles tentatively, and Professor Dumbledore inclines his head slightly.

There are only four people left, including Ron, and Harry crosses his fingers and hopes that Ron will end up in Slytherin, too, even though he didn’t seem to want it, but instead he gets a decisive, “GRYFFINDOR” that’s followed by a round of cheers apparently headed by the twins.

That’s okay, though, Harry thinks as Blaise Zabini is sorted into Slytherin, because Harry is already friends with Ron, and he’ll hopefully still be able to see him in class or maybe at meals. Maybe he’ll be able to make friends with Ron’s friends, too, and he’ll be able to have even more.

Professor Dumbledore stands as Professor McGonagall takes the Sorting Hat away; he looks almost absurdly excited, arms open wide, smile like he’s never been anywhere he wanted to be more. “Welcome,” he announces. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!”

He sits, and as the room erupts in cheers Harry blinks at him, not sure what his reaction is supposed to be. Because he seems a bit mad.

“Potatoes, Potter?”

Harry blinks at Draco, then looks at the table, and his mouth drops open. Because the table is now piled high with food, meat and potatoes and Yorkshire pudding and vegetables and—bizarrely—peppermint humbugs. He had never seen this much food before, especially not that he could actually eat instead of Dudley eating it or Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon sending him to his cupboard instead of letting him eat, so he takes heaping piles of everything he can reach in case the platters disappear before he’s not hungry anymore.

Draco and Pansy and most of the people around him are eating all daintily and posh-like, though Crabbe and Goyle who are sitting one next to and one across from Draco are stuffing their faces even faster than Harry is.

Draco snorts. “The food’s not going to run away, Potter.”

“I—” Harry starts, then stops, swallowing so he can talk without his mouth full. “I know. ‘m just hungry.”

“Right.” Draco looks amused, cutting up his lamb chops with precise motions. “You’d think nobody ever fed you before.”

Harry shrugs, a little uncomfortable. He was never starved, exactly. He just never had enough to eat. But he slows down a little, partly so Draco will stop looking at him like that and partly because he’s already starting to get full.

“We have a good number of the Sacred 28 this year,” Pansy says after swallowing an impossibly small bite of chicken. “Bulstrode, Greengrass, Nott, you and I of course. The Longbottom twit, though I hardly think his name should be considered equal to ours.”

“Abbott, as well,” Draco adds, “though I suppose she shouldn’t count, seeing as she’s a half-blood. Contaminating their line with muggle blood.”

Harry feels rather silly for not knowing what they’re talking about, but he didn’t see it in the History of Magic. “What’s the Sacred 28?”

Pansy glances at him. “The twenty-eight fully pureblood families. A Potters may have counted before you, but your name is so…muggle. And besides, you’re a half-blood.”

“Both of my parents were magic, though.”

“Yes,” Draco says with feigned patience, “bur your mother was a muggleborn. How do you not know this?”

Harry shrugs. “My aunt and uncle don’t talk about my parents.”

Draco looks horrified. “Not even Pensieve memories?”

Pansy rolls her eyes. “Not everyone can afford a family Pensieve.”

Harry has no idea what a Pensieve is or why that would have anything to do with memories, but he doesn’t particularly want to admit that after revealing that he doesn’t know something that apparently he should have, so he looks up at the High Table again. Professor McGonagall is talking to Professor Dumbledore, Hagrid is sneaking glances at Harry and drinking deeply from his goblet, and Professor Quirrell—in his bizarre purple turban—is talking to a professor who looks to be in his early thirties with sallow skin and greasy black hair.

As though he feels Harry’s eyes on him, the man looks past Professor Quirrell straight into Harry’s eyes; a bolt of pain shoots through his forehead right where the scar is, and he ducks down, clapping his hand to his head. “Ouch.”

Pansy rolls her eyes. “Eat your ice cream too fast, Potter?”

The pain is gone, just as abruptly as it had appeared, and he takes his hand away gingerly. “No. I’m fine. Uh, who’s that talking to Professor Quirrell?”

“Professor Snape,” Draco tells him, sounding smug. “Potions Master and Head of Slytherin House. Look at him, making Quirrell quiver.”

“How did you—have you met the professors before?” He supposes everyone who grew up knowing about magic must have known about Hogwarts long before coming, unless there are other magical schools that they could have gone to. He’ll have to figure out how that works.

Draco laughs. “No. Other than Professor Snape; he’s been to the Manor. But my father provided me with a dossier on each of them.”

“A what?”

“A file. He’s a Governor of the school, you know. He knows about all of the teachers. Says Dumbledore’s mad, but everyone else loves him, so he can’t get rid of him.”

Harry isn’t sure what to say to that, so he looks at the Headmaster again. Honestly, Harry isn’t sure if he cares if he’s mad, as long as Harry gets to stay.

By the time Professor Dumbledore is done making a speech about how the third floor of the school will kill them—and that won’t be too hard for Harry to avoid; he has no interest in  dying at school, not when he’s avoided getting his head bashed in by Dudley all these years—and the food is gone, Harry is full and sleepy and not really sure how to sing a song with no tune for which he doesn’t really know the words so he just mouths along vaguely, blinking to keep his eyes open.

Finally, they’re done, the two Weasley twins finishing up with a slow funeral dirge and Dumbledore applauding like that’s a normal thing to do at school. Though this isn’t a normal school. Harry can tell that already.

One of the older female students from the table, who’s wearing a badge with a P on it, says, “First-years, with me to the dungeons.”

Harry’s pulse starts pounding in his throat, because they’re going to the dungeons. Does that mean there’s something wrong with them? But there’s no way to ask, so he sets that aside for the moment.

Harry stands up, stumbling a little as his robes get tangled around his ankles, and Draco grabs his arm in a grip that’s a little too hard. They follow after the prefect, Harry fixing an eye on the white-blond of the back of Draco’s head so he doesn’t get lost in the crowd. This would be a horrible place to get lost, he thinks.

He tries to spot Ron, and the hair should be noticeable, but Harry’s too short, and there are too many people. But he’ll see Ron eventually, and right now he just wants to find out where he’ll sleep. Even if it is in the dungeons, these posh rich kids need to sleep there too, so maybe it won’t be too bad.

They take a few flights of stairs to get down to where they’re going, and Harry tries to pay attention to the exact way that they get there but it’s hard because everything looks the same and he doesn’t really know where they’re going and there’s just so much to take in.

The walls to the dungeons are stone when they get down there, and cool to the touch and a little bit rough, but the door that the prefect stops in front of, people flooding around them to get into it, is dark wood, gleaming in the light of the torches along the sides of the hallway. He wonders at the fact that it hasn’t warped or changed size like he remembers the cupboard door doing sometimes when it got really humid or warm, but maybe magic is good for that, too.

“This is the entrance to the Slytherin dormitory,” the prefect says. “This will be your home while you are at Hogwarts, and you are expected to treat it as such.”

Does that mean they need to clean it, Harry wonders, but decides not to ask. They probably will. It’s not like anybody else would want to come down to the basement where it’s cold to do cleaning. With as many people as they have, though, it should at least be faster, and they don’t have to cook, so that’ll make things easier.

“The only way to gain entrance through this door is by password, which will change every three days. The updated password will be posted inside the common room. You are not to share the password with anybody outside of this House, nor to bring an outside into the dormitory. The only people who are not members of Slytherin who are allowed in are professors and the Headmaster.”

People have stopped moving around them to go into the door at this point, and she looks out at all of them. “You may be young, but you are still Slytherin, and will be expected to behave as such. The way that you behave reflects not only on yourself but also on the House and on Professor Snape. You will pay professors the respect that they deserve, and Professor Snape deserves the most respect of all.” There is a beat as she surveys them, and then she turns to the door and says, “ _Reverentia_.”

The door swings open, and when she walks in, they all follow.


	3. Chapter 3

The tall dark Professor from the feast—Professor Snape—stalks into the common room once they’re all in there, stopping in front of a massive unlit fireplace. He eyes Harry with disdain Harry’s abundantly familiar with, then widens his gaze to sneer at the room as a whole.

“My name is Professor Severus Snape,” he says, and his voice carries despite being so quiet. Maybe it’s the stone walls, Harry thinks, or maybe it’s magic. “I am your Head of House. That means you are my responsibility while you are here. Should you have a problem, you will go to a prefect first and then if they cannot help you, you will go to me. I will not stand for a hoard of owls at breakfast each morning from parents concerned that their idiot child cannot manage to feed themselves.” He looks around the room as though daring them to argue; there’s only silence. Harry isn’t sure if he’s breathing.

“Throughout the years, our House has become associated with deceit and manipulation. But what we are is a House of ambition and success, and I expect each of you to take the steps necessary to be successful in your own regard.” His eyes look like they fasten briefly on Draco, who’s quivering with excitement next to Harry. “If you are struggling in a class, you will ask for help; failure to do so that results in a detriment to your grades will be regarded as a disgrace to your House. All muggleborn first year students will additionally receive three lessons on the fundamentals of the wizarding world, while all purebloods will receive three lessons on the muggle world.”

Draco goes rigid beside Harry. “Professor—”

Professor Snape’s gaze snaps to him. “Ignorance is an obstacle to success, Mr. Malfoy. I will not have students of mine babbling about ekseltricity or fellytones.” Draco recoils a little, and Professor Snape returns to surveying the room. “As returning students are aware, I have little tolerance for blood slurs in my House. Believe what you like about blood purity, but you _will_ learn the discipline not to act on it or speak of it at unsuitable times and to unsuitable people.

“Lastly, a reminder to all in my House. IntraHouse sabotage is, as always, an offense resulting in detention as a minimum. Success is often contingent on working with those you may not like or cannot stand, and you will practice that here. Alliances are not mandated, but you will not sabotage or undermine each other or your House.”

He is silent for a moment, and then his eyes fix on Harry and his lip curls up in a sneer. “I see the Boy Who Lived has decided to grace us with his presence.” Harry stares at him, baffled; he wasn’t aware he had another choice. “How very like your father you look.” And then he looks away from Harry, but that doesn’t make the feeling like a weight on his chest go away. “I will remain in the common room for an hour. You may ask me questions that you have.” With that, he flicks his hand, and people scatter.

Harry wants to approach him to ask about his father—this man knew his _father_ —but he has a feeling the question wouldn’t be welcome. But his _father_.

He looks like his father.

Draco heads off towards the other first year boys, and Harry is about to follow when he hears a girl who isn’t a first year ask Professor Snape, “Sir, who’s the Boy Who Lived?” Harry would sure like an answer to that, at least an answer more coherent than Hagrid’s—not that he doesn’t appreciate Hagrid’s explanation, but it was a bit unclear—so he stays where he is, standing near the couch where Professor Snape is sitting like a King in a story book holding court.

“Why were you not at the lesson last year on the most recent Wizarding War?”

The girl scuffs her feet a little. “I was sick during that class, sir. Dragon pox.”

Professor Snape nods. “I remember. Very well.” And then he snaps, “Hoping to hear your adulations, Mr. Potter?”

Harry isn’t really sure what that means, but he knows the tone of voice well enough, and he has the sudden thought that this is just like his house, and Professor Snape is like his Aunt, and Harry’s still a freak. He’ll be a freak no matter where he goes. “No, sir,” he says. “Mr., uh, Hagrid told me about what happened, but I don’t know anything else about it. Sir. My Aunt Petunia told me it was a car crash.”

Professor Snape stares at him for a long time, so long that Harry wants to check to see if he has something on his face, and then he turns back to the girl. “More than twenty years ago,” he begins, his voice precise to the point of being clipped, “the war began. The Dark Lord had formed an army, made up of Death Eaters who desired dominion over muggles and muggleborns and of magical creatures who had been disenfranchised by the Ministry of Magic. His belief was in that of blood purity, and in the inferiority of muggles and muggleborns. He and his Death Eaters strove to destroy all those who opposed him or who would not fall in line, and to kill muggles and muggleborns.”

“Like Hitler,” the girl says, then claps her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, sir.”

Professor Snape inclines his head slightly. “That is an apt comparison. Take one point for Slytherin.”

She beams at him. “Thank you, sir. But—how did he die, sir? If he’s not still—still around.”

“Ten years ago, the Dark Lord attempted to kill a boy using the Killing Curse, which rebounded, vanquishing him instead.” Professor Snape looks back at Harry again, lip lifting in a sneer. “The Boy Who Lived.”

The girl turns wide eyes on Harry. “You killed wizard Hitler?” she breathes, and Harry shrugs uncomfortably. “That’s so _cool_. It’s like the opposite of the killing baby Hitler question.” And then something twists oddly in her expression, the smile falling a little. “That’s—that’s He Who Must Not Be Named, right? The Dark Lord? People said that he was in Slytherin.”

Professor Snape nods again. “He was.”

“And that’s why people think we’re bad. Or part of the reason, right?” Another half-nod. “But if the Boy Who Lived is one of us, too, we can be that bad.”

Harry hunches his shoulders, uncomfortable with that idea. Because whatever he did, or whatever people think he did, it doesn’t make him important. He doesn’t want to be important, or if he does, he wants it to be for something he did and remembers doing.

Professor Snape glances over at Harry, then looks at the girl and says, “We will see. But remember that who you are and who Slytherins are is not defined by the actions of the Dark Lord or his followers. If you wish for Slytherin to be great, you will yourself great and add your voice to the scale tipping the balance of public perception regarding our House. Do you understand?”

That sounds a bit harsh to Harry, but the girl’s expression brightens again, and she says, “Yes, sir. I’ll try to do that.”

“That alone puts you ahead of some of your predecessors, and many of your contemporaries. Now go to your friends. You have spent enough time talking to me.”

She bobs her head. “Yes, sir.” And then she hurries off, and someone else—an older student—walks over and starts talking to Professor Snape about something Harry doesn’t understand, so he heads over towards where Draco is standing with some of the other first years.

Draco is flanked by Crabbe and Goyle, so Harry squeezes in between Pansy and the boy Harry thinks is named Blaise; the two are standing a little bit apart, so there’s space.

“My father said he would let me sit in on the Wizengamot starting when I am thirteen, so that by the time I am of age I will be qualified to take over one of the empty seats.”

One of the other boys laughs. “There might be not even be any more open seats by the time we’re of age. All of the war losses are being filled as the heirs come to age.” He glances at Harry. “They’d probably make a new seat for you if you asked.”

Harry isn’t really sure what they’re talking about, so he just shrugs; the boy stares at him for a moment, then seems to take that as an answer. Draco rolls his eyes, scoffing, “He doesn’t need to do that; they can just give him the Potter seat.”

Harry settles in to listen, trying to see what he can learn. There’s so much he doesn’t know, and it doesn’t seem like anyone is going to just tell him, so he’ll have to figure it out this way.

\--

Harry wakes up early the next day even though there is no Aunt Petunia banging on his door demanding he go cook breakfast; he’s not sure what time it is because there are no windows, but everyone else is still asleep. He doesn’t really want to stay in bed with nothing to do, and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to fall back asleep, so he climbs out of bed.

He’s quick to wash up and put on his robe over his jeans and one of Dudley’s hideously oversized shirts; it’s cold in the dungeons for September, and even though he thinks the robe looks silly, he’s glad to have another layer to wear. It always feels like he’s cold, like wind rattles through his ribs and chill sinks into his bones.

Draco said that their Head of House is also the Potions Master—and, presumably, the Potions Professor—so Harry grabs his Potions book and heads to the common room to try to study some more for it. He’s not sure when the first Potions class is, but he knows he’s not prepared for it, because he’s only gotten through a couple chapters, and he’s not sure he understands most of what he read.

But when he gets to the common room, he sees…not mess, because it’s neat, and there’s nothing particularly out of place. But the room feels grimy, the way the cupboard gets sometimes in corners that are too far for him to reach. And they’re supposed to treat this like they’re house, so he should clean it up, try to make it a little less grimy and a little nicer.

There aren’t any cleaning supplies that he can find, maybe because the older ones do it by magic—which would explain why he didn’t see them doing it last night—so he heads back to his dorm room and grabs one of the holeyer of Dudley’s old shirts then goes back to the common room to start scrubbing.

It’s good work, mindless and not too hard, and Harry loses himself in it, working his way around the room scrubbing the worst of the grime out of corners. Maybe if he does this well, they’ll like him more. Because they all seem to care about the House a lot, or at least the idea of the House, and if he treats it well then it’ll look good of him.

He’s scrubbing at a particularly grimy spot on the fireplace when someone clears their throat behind him; he spins to see a woman with a prefect badge standing near the entranceway to the dorm areas, staring at him. “What are you doing, Potter?”

Harry clutches at the now-dirty cloth in his hand. “They said we’re supposed to treat here like our house at home.”

One eyebrow goes up. “You regularly wake up early to go around cleaning your house?”

Harry nods. “Yes, ma’am.”

She stares at him for another minute, so long he starts fidgeting, wondering if he’s cleaning it wrong or if he was supposed to wait for instructions on what to clean. And then she sighs. “We have house elves to do the cleaning for us. All that instruction means is to not go around destroying stuff and to treat it with respect. Go put that rag away from wherever you found it, and then I’ll take you to the Great Hall. Breakfast is starting in a minute.”

Harry nods again, heading towards her. “Yes, ma’am.”

When he’s about to pass her, she reaches out and touches his shoulder; he stops, looking at her. “And Potter, don’t tell anyone about doing this, or they’ll take advantage. And I’m not ma’am. My name is Annabelle Caster; you can call me Prefect Caster if you want to be formal about it.”

“What do you mean, they’ll take advantage?”

Her lips thin, and then she asks, “What would you do if someone told you they’d clean up any mess you’d make?”

Harry thinks about it for a second, then says, “Try not to make a mess. Or offer to help, I guess, if I did.”

She blows out a breath. “It’s a wonder this is where they put you.” Before Harry can take offense to that, she says, “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you what we need to know. I don’t want anyone accusing us snakes of abusing The Boy Who Lived.” She pats him on the shoulder. “Off you go, Potter. I’ll be waiting.”

Harry hurries off.

Prefect Caster is waiting for him when he gets back, and she leads him through the circuitous route to the Great Hall, which is mostly empty. They sit down near one end of the Slytherin table, her on one side and him on the other; she taps the table in front of them, and serving plates filled with bacon, eggs, toast, fruit, and other food appear around them. There’s a plate in front of each of them, and Harry piles his high with toast and fruit and eggs.

“So,” she says after he’s taken his first couple bites of toast scraped with butter, “ask me whatever question you have.”

Harry looks at her for a second, then asks, “Why are you helping me?”

She smiles at him, and he smiles back because he’s never had someone smile at him like that before, like he did something right and they’re proud of him for it. “Well, maybe you’re not as hopeless as I thought. There are a lot of answers to that question, and not all of them are all that selfless. I’m not a Hufflepuff; we don’t do things just because they’re nice.”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t do most things because they’re nice, either.”

“You were going to clean the whole damn common room if I didn’t stop you.”

“Because I thought I was supposed to do things like at my house. That’s what they told me. I was doing what they told me.”

She reaches out and grabs a piece of bacon, waving it at him. “I know, I know. I’m not scolding you. But for my reasons. You hold a considerable amount of power in our society. If I help you, then you’re more likely to wield that power in my direction.”

“I don’t want to…wield my power.” The idea makes him cringe, the thought of being like Dudley throwing a tantrum to get his way. He doesn’t want to be like that.”

Prefect Caster shrugs one shoulder. “Regardless, how you are treated and how you come out of our House will reflect strongly on us. People may struggle with the idea of you being one of us, but they will eviscerate us if they think we’re mistreating you. And if you come out small, if you come out shaking, if you come out cowed, that will be all the more ammunition against our House, because then we will have broken The Boy Who Lived.” She crunches down on a piece of toast, then swallows. “And you are my responsibility, as a member of my House.”

“Why does who I am matter that much?”

She smiles. “It matters because our world has decided it matters. Some of them would say it’s because you must be strong, so you could have vanquished He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and that we want that strength on our side. I don’t know if I believe that. I’m not sure if I care. But as long as they all think you’re important, and precious, then you are. That’s the way it works.”

Harry thinks that’s totally barmy, but she probably knows more about it than he does, so he won’t argue.

Instead, he asks, “But if I won’t wield my power in your favor or whatever it is you’re looking for, why would you still help me? How much can me not being scared really help anyone else in the House?”

She takes a while before answering, tapping on the side of her plate with a half-eaten piece of toast. “My father is a wizard, a half-blood, not particularly important or remarkable in the grand scheme of things. He works at a shop in one of the wizarding villages in Wales. My mum is muggleborn, stays at home mostly, sometimes makes charms for people. The first time I went home, someone at my dad’s shop spit on me, called me a Death Eater. The war’s over, but people don’t remember that, sometimes. You’re the boy who ended the war. You’re the quintessential anti-Death Eater. If you’re one of us, you prove that we’re not all like that. And if you like us, if you _trust_ us, then other people will too. With you, we will show them that Slytherin doesn’t mean Dark or evil. I intend to go places, and I intend to never be spit on again.” She smiles. “And you’ll get us there.”

Harry has no idea what Death Eaters are, though he remembers Professor Snape mentioning them the night before, but it seems like a stupid thing to ask after her speech, so he just says, “Thanks. I think.”

She laughs. “You seem like a good kid. Most of the kids we end up with, they’re prats at eleven. We get more purebloods than any other House, and they grow up like bloody royalty, some of them.” She crunches on some more toast. “You’ll survive here if you learn how to play the game.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's technically Sunday.
> 
> NOTE: the next chapter won't be up until I get the book from the library again, because (unfortunately) this chapter needs me to actually have the book. Hopefully that'll be soon.


	4. Chapter 4

Ron doesn’t talk to Harry at all during the first class they have together, though he keeps shooting him dirty looks. Harry isn’t really sure what he did wrong or why Ron is angry at him, but he’s too busy trying to figure out how to turn a match into a needle. He’s not really sure why that’s useful or when he’ll ever have to do that—he has a couple of sewing needles and some thread packed in his trunk to patch any holes in his clothes, and he’s not really planning on losing them—but it’s what Professor McGonagall told them to do, so he’ll do it.

Draco’s is silvery and pointy, though it still feels like wood, and Theo has gotten his to be metal, though the sulfur end is still there on the rounded end. Harry’s hasn’t done anything, and it’s hard not to feel discouraged when his friends are so much better than him.

After class, he breaks away from Draco and the rest of them to hurry after Ron, tapping him on the shoulder when he reaches him. Ron spins, scowling at him. “What do you want?”

Harry falls back a step, surprised at the venom in his voice. “I just wanted to say hi. I haven’t seen you since the train.”

“Yeah, because you’re a _snake_. I thought you were my friend.”

“I…am.” Harry rubs at his face. He’s not really sure what’s going on, but it’s not what he thought would happen. Ron had seemed to want to be his friend on the train, and he’s not sure what changed.

“You _were_ , but then you went off and became a snake. I thought you wanted to be with me, with the Gryffindors.”

Harry shrugs, uncomfortable with all of the people in the hallway who might be watching or listening to them. “I thought—I thought because you’re my friend, then I have friends in Slytherin and I have a friend in Gryffindor and maybe I can be friends with your friends.” He shrugs again. “I guess it was a stupid idea. I’ll leave you alone.”

He starts walking faster, trying to catch up with Draco, and after a second Ron hurries after her, grabbing his shoulder. “Wait.” Harry looks at him. “I just—Slytherins are the enemies, you know. So when you were sorted to Slytherin, you became the enemy.”

“But can’t I just…not be? The hat didn’t say anything about us not being allowed to be friends, right?”

“Right,” Ron says slowly. “I—maybe. Yeah. I want to be friends with you.”

Harry beams at him. “Great. You have any idea how to make that stupid match turn into a needle?”

Ron shakes his head. “I didn’t get mine to do anything. Did you see how McGonagall was fussing over Granger’s like it was the best thing ever?”

“And she didn’t even mention Draco’s or Theo’s.”

“Well they’re—” He looks at Harry, looks at his tie. “Yeah. She is our Head of House. You’ve got Snape. That must be a nightmare.”

Harry shrugs. “He’s not that bad, I don’t think. I mean, he doesn’t seem all that nice, but he’s not all that awful, I don’t think.”

“We have double Potions with you on Friday, so I guess we’ll see.”

\--

Professor Snape sweeps into the Potion’s room with his cloak billowing behind him, and the entire room falls silent. The room is colder than the dormitory—though not by much—and they’ve all been staring at the pickled animals in glass jars around the room. Draco and Theo seem fascinated. Harry would really like there to not be brains outside a body near him.

Snape stops in the front of the room, and Harry sits up straighter to show that he’s paying attention. Snape picks up a piece paper and starts calling roll off of it. When he gets to Harry, he pauses. “Ah, yes,” he says softly. “Harry Potter. Our new— _celebrity_.”

Finnegan and Draco both snigger, then turn and glare at each other, and Harry sinks down a little in his seat. Why can’t he just be normal _somewhere_?

Snape finishes calling the names, then sets the paper and looks up at the class. “You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.”

Harry glances over to exchange a look with Ron; next to him, Granger is sitting on the edge of her seat with as much wide-eyed enthusiasm as Draco is next to Harry. He’ll have to tell Draco that after class is over. He’ll hate it.

He’s so busy watching everyone else react that he nearly jumps out of his chair when Snape snaps, “Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

Harry blinks at him. That never came up in his reading, though he vaguely remembers seeing the two ingredients in the list in the back of the book. Near Ron, Granger’s hair is in the air, quivering a little. Harry shakes his head. “I don’t know, sir.”

Snape sneers at him. “Tut, tut—fame clearly isn’t everything. Let’s try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

Granger’s hand gets, if possible, higher, but Snape continues to ignore her, staring directly at Harry with the darkest eyes he’s ever seen; they look even darker against the pale of his skin. Draco nudges him under the table, maybe to try to give him an answer, but he’s not going to use Draco to cheat, especially not with Snape staring at him like this. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Thought you wouldn’t open a book before coming, eh, Potter?”

Harry’s jaw clenches before he can help himself, and he forces himself to relax it before saying, “I read the first three chapters, sir, and I don’t remember seeing either of those there. I think Granger knows, though, sir.”

Snape’s eyes snap to Granger. “Put your hand down, Ms. Granger, and stop waving it at me. If I had intended to question you, I would have done so.” She sinks back down into her chair, and Snape goes back to staring at Harry. “Very well, if you claim to have read those chapters, let us see. What is the difference, then, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

Harry did see those, he knows he did, because it mentioned them specifically in the list. “They’re the same, sir. Uh, they’re the same plant. Aconite, I think.”

“You think, Potter, or, you know? Potions is not a science for which you can simply _think_ and hope that the result will turn out. And for your information, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most potions. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which, yes, Potter, also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren’t you all writing this down?”

\--

Harry hates Snape.

That’s a lie. He doesn’t hate Snape. He doesn’t hate people. He doesn’t like to hate people. He never managed to quite get himself to hate his relatives, no matter how much he wants to, because they’re the only people he has, and he hates living with them, hates how they treat him, but he doesn’t hate…them.

Usually.

But Snape—Harry wants to badly to impress Snape, because this is the first place where he’s not going to have teachers and classmates and everyone listening first to Dudley telling them how bad Harry is, how he’s a terror, how he’s a criminal, and Snape is his Head of House, and they’re supposed to be…not like a family, but…something.

Instead, Snape seems to hate him for no reason that Harry can figure out, and he’s used to that, he’s used to everyone hating him, he just wishes he knew _why_.

It doesn’t matter, though, he guesses. If he does his best and keeps his head down and does everything that Snape says and the prefects say, and the other teachers, maybe Snape will late him a little less. Not that that every worked on Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, but Harry’s gotten good at it now, gotten good at keeping the weird stuff from happening around him except with the thing with the snake, and none of the people here saw when he was younger and couldn’t control it, and so maybe they won’t hate him as much for as long.

And even if they do, Draco seems to like him, and Ron, and though he can’t really talk to the two of them together he never even had one friend before so having two he just can’t see at the same time is okay. And Blaise and Theo are nice, or at least not mean, and Crabbe and Goyle mostly just follow Draco around but even though they look kind of like Dudley they haven’t hurt Harry yet.

Besides, he’s lived in worse places—or a worse place—and with worse people, and he’s never had this many friends before, and he’ll be able to survive it. Seven years isn’t that long for someone in power to hate him. He’s survived ten so far.

Stretching, Harry uncurls from his corner on the floor of the library; it’s remarkably warm there even though the walls are stone, and every time he comes in he has the thought that he loves magic, because it means he doesn’t need to be cold all the time.

There aren’t any free tables near him, but he spots one where Granger is the only person working there, four books strewn out around her, so he heads over to the seat across from her. She doesn’t look up when he stops there, so he whispers, “Can I sit here?”

She glances up at him, clearly startled, then nods. He drops his bag down next to the seat and sits down, pulling out his Potions book. If Snape is going to ask him questions from every part of it, he’d better get through it, and fast.

She looks at it, then asks, “Why haven’t you gotten through the rest of it?”

If she was someone else he might have thought she was making fun of him for not having read the entire book—he knows the rest of the Slytherins have, or at least the purebloods. Maybe not Crabbe or Goyle, but they don’t seem to care and nobody seems to care if they have. But she just sounds curious, so Harry shrugs and says, “I tried to, but I don’t know what most of the words in it are, so I need to keep checking against my other book. And it takes a long time.”

She nods. “I was having that trouble too, so I wrote out a list myself. Writing out information helps with cognition.” He blinks at her, not sure what that word means. “Memory. You’ll remember it better if you write it down.” She shakes her hand out. “Though I wish I had listened to my mum and brought some pens. Quills hurt my hand.” She looks at her hand, then back at him. “I’m muggleborn. We, uh, use pens instead of quills. They’re like quills but round and don’t have feathers and in some cases there is a mechanism to eject the writing end so that it doesn’t dry out but can be used—”

That makes Harry smile, even though Granger is sometimes an insufferable know-it-all who uses words that nobody their age should use. “I’m muggle-raised, Granger. I know what a pen is.”

“Oh.” She falls silent, and he goes back to flipping through his Potions book to try to find the start of chapter four. “Why were you muggle-raised? I’m sure any wizarding family would have been willing to take you in.”

Harry shoves a hand through his hair, abruptly frustrated with the conversation. “Yeah, well, they didn’t.” He pushes away from the table, chair scraping a little against the floor, and grabs his bag and the book. “Thanks for the advice.”

She stares up at him, startled, and he walks away before she has the chance to say anything else. He doesn’t want to hear people talking about how anyone would be happy to take him, because if that were true, he wouldn’t be stuck with the bloody Dursleys, and he would be like Draco or Theo instead. But that didn’t happen, and he’s with the Dursleys, and so clearly nobody wanted him.

Because they all call him special or important or whatever they want to call him, but that doesn’t mean they actually want to take care at him. It just means they want to gawk at him and expect things of him.

So screw whatever Granger thinks. At least he knows what a pen is.


	5. Chapter 5

The next week isn’t much better, at least not when it comes to Potions. Ron’s his friend now, more or less, even though it’s hard for them to see each other much other than in the library where neither of them really want to be, and Draco gets annoyed if he spends too much time with Ron so Harry has taken to doing it when Draco’s not paying attention so he doesn’t get scathing looks or the silent treatment.

But in Potions, Snape has taken to treating him somehow both like he’s not there and like he’s a disgusting thing to be barely tolerated and only with much disdain. It’s something Harry is oddly familiar with, and he has half an urge to tell Snape that he reminds him of Aunt Petunia. But he’d like to keep his head on his shoulders, so he keeps quiet.

That doesn’t mean he likes it, though, Snape’s hissed comments about how inept Harry is and the way he ignores Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas throwing things into his cauldron to try to make his potion explode. He doesn’t take any points from Harry—he never takes points from Slytherins, at least not in public—but he doesn’t take any points from the two Gryffindors, either.

Harry doesn’t get it. He’s not sure what he did to anger Professor Snape, what he could possibly have done before he ever met the man, but he figures if he just holds his tongue and stays in line there’ll be less for Snape to go after him for. Not nothing—like the Dursleys, Snape can probably always find something—but less.

So he does his homework as carefully as he can, even though writing with a quill is uncomfortable and makes his hand ache, and he keeps having to have Draco or sometimes an older student help him erase the blots from the ink when he presses for too long. And he knows Professor Snape said to ask for help, but he’s pretty sure that doesn’t apply to him. He can’t imagine walking into Professor Snape’s office and asking for an explanation of what all of the ingredients and terms Harry has never heard of are. Snape would probably throw him out.

Or laugh.

So he spends all of the spare time he can find reading the Potion’s book and the Herbology book and sometimes playing a game called Exploding Snaps with Draco over the weekend when he drags him out of the library saying, “You’re being like a Ravenclaw. Learn to be Slytherin.”

Because Harry wants to be a Slytherin. He wants to be a good Slytherin, because then maybe Professor Snape will like him a little more. And all of the other Slytherins, too, the ones who look at him like they don’t know what to do with him and sometimes get quiet when he’s around.

It’s not as bad as back home where Dudley scared everyone out of being friends with him, but it’s like they’re being careful, like they think he’s going to lash out or hurt someone.

Except for the ones who look at him like they want something from him, but he ignores them too because the few people at home who ignored Dudley were like they, wanting him to do favors for them in exchange for they not hurt him. Sometimes he did them, but he was going to be hurt anyway, so most of the time he didn’t.

Saturday evening he goes to the classroom Professor Snape—or probably one of the prefects—posted on the common room board for the first class on the wizarding world. He knows he’s not a muggleborn, but he might as well be, given Aunt Petunia and Uncle Dursley. They’re so muggle they should count as doubly so.

There are two other students there, one of whom is the second-year he saw talking to Professor Snape earlier, and he thinks the other one is one of the first-years, Tracy Davis. She generally sits on the other side of the room of him in most of their classes, and she rarely talks, so he’s not sure if that’s her name.

He sits down next to her. “I didn’t know you’re muggleborn.”

She glances over at him, her eyes widening a little in a way he’s getting irritatingly used to. “I’m not. Mum was—mum’s a witch, but I was raised by my dad, so when I asked Professor Snape he said I should come to the lesson. What are you—”

The door opens behind them, and Harry and Tracy twist to see Professor Snape sweep in to the room, robes billowing behind him. He walks all the way to the front of the room, then looks at Harry and snaps, “What do you think you’re doing here, Mr. Potter?”

Harry blinks at him. “I need to—”

“You don’t need to do anything, Mr. Potter, other than follow instructions as they are given. Are you muggleborn?”

Harry glances at Tracy. “No, but—”

“Did I not say that this class is for muggleborn students?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then what is so difficult for you to understand? Or did you simply come here so you could listen again to the tale of how you defeated the Dark Lord? I imagine you must relish in being lavished in praise of your heroism. But you will not receive that here, and I will expect you in the future to not waste my time. Get out.”

“But, sir, I—”

“Out, Mr. Potter.”

Harry stands. “Sir, my Aunt and Uncle—”

“Are aware of the wizarding world, Mr. Potter, so do not think to pull that on me. _Out_ , or you will have detention for a week. I will not have you taking any more time from the students who actually need this.”

Harry turns and hurries out of the room, wondering briefly about how Snape knows that his Aunt and Uncle know about magic. It wasn’t like he came and met them. But that must just be an assumption, because as far as Harry knows the only thing his Aunt and Uncle are aware of is that magic exists, and they hate it.

He waits until the door is closed behind him before taking off running, pelting down the corridor because he just needs to get away more than anything else, because of course it’s like this, of course no matter where he goes they hate him, because he’s a freak, and he’s never managed to be normal and he never will. He’ll never learn how to fit in in the wizarding world, and he’ll never learn how to be like everyone else, and he’ll never be able to get adults to like him, and it’s just like being home except everyone has magic so it’ll be so much easier for people to hurt him.

He’s not really sure where he’s going, just that he’s going up because he wants to get as far away from the dungeons as he can, up and up and up until his breath is pulling raggedly through his throat and his chest burns and his legs hurt but he keeps going, finally stopping to learn against a door, breathing hard.

Finally, when he can breathe without it feeling like he’s going to exhale his lungs through his mouth, he turns and tries the door, pulling on the handle. But it just rattles and he thinks he can hear growling behind it, so he starts walking again, trying to find a place he can disappear for a while.

Because this whole place, this castle, it’s too big and sprawling and open, and as much as he hated the cupboard it was also small and closed in and he could _hide_. There’s nowhere to hide here, nowhere to disappear.

Eventually, pacing one of the hallways, he spots a door and yanks it open to find a room, small and dark with some sort of diffuse mild light coming out of the ceiling and a lock on the inside but nothing on the outside, and he sits down in it next to the door, closing and locking it behind him. The room is just big enough for him to stretch his legs out and just tall enough for him to stand without brushing his head against the ceiling, and he wonders what it could possibly be good for. Storing rags or bedsheets, maybe, though he would have thought there would be shelves for those.

There must be some magic reason for it, and at the moment, he really doesn’t care. He just wanted somewhere to disappear for a while, and now he has it.

He’s not quite shaking anymore from how angry and horrified and confused he is about Professor Snape kicking him out when he did nothing wrong, but he can still feel a shadow of it in his hands, his wrists, across his shoulders, so he just pulls his knees up and puts his head down and pretends he’s back at Number 4 Privet Drive where he hated every day but at least he knew what was coming.

Somehow, sometime later, he falls asleep, still curled up with his back against the wall, the light dimming for him as he drifts off.

\--

A stiff neck wakes him sometime later, and he unfolds himself, stretches, and unlocks the door, intending to head back to the dormitory. But when he opens the door a crack, hears voices, vaguely familiar but not, he thinks, Slytherin.

“I don’t see why we have to look for him. It’s not like he’s one of ours.”

“The way Ronniekins was begging to come looking, you’d think he was.” Harry shifts his weight a little, and the door creaks in his hand. He freezes. “You hear that, Gred?”

“I do, Forge.” And then a hand is pushing the door open, and Harry steps out of the way so as not to get hit. One of Ron’s brothers—one of the twins—peers in at him, the other just behind him. “Never seen this room before. Hiding from the git in there?”

“I—” Abruptly, Harry feels stupid. “Are you going to get me in trouble?”

The one closer to him laughs. “We’re not, but Snape might kill you.”

“Sent half the school out looking for you,” the other one adds. “Have you been in here the whole time?”

Harry nods a little miserably, imagining detention with Snape for the rest of the month. He didn’t think it was all that bad, and he hadn’t meant to fall asleep. “Sorry you had to come looking for me.”

The closer one shrugs. “It gave us a chance to map out more of the school.” He offers a hand. “Fred. And this here is my brother George.”

“Do you have to bring me to Professor Snape?”

The twins exchange a look, and then Fred says, “It was Professor Dumbledore who sent us out.”

“So I guess he’s the one we should bring you to,” George finishes.

Harry beams at them. “Thank you.”

\--

Dumbledore greets them outside of his office with a broad smile and a twinkle in his eye, first turning to Harry and asking, “You all right, my boy?”

Harry nods, clenching his fingers in his robe and feeling increasingly stupid that he had Fred and George bother the headmaster with them. He should have just gone to Snape and taken in his punishment. “Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore nods, then turns to Fred and George and says, “Twenty points to Gryffindor.”

Harry thinks that’s really high for them just happening to stumble upon him in the corridor, but the one Harry’s pretty sure is George grins and says, “Twenty points each, Professor? It wouldn’t do for George to get all the credit.”

Harry has the feeling Dumbledore knows the one talking is George, too, but he smiles gamely and says, “Very well, Mr. Weasley. You can take twenty points as well. Now run along. I’d like to speak to Mr. Potter individually before handing him over to the mercy of his Head of House.”

Harry gulps but follows Dumbledore as he announces, “Blood Pops,” and then leads Harry up the moving staircase to what’s probably his office. It’s filled with stuff that looks magical, colorful, and really old, and he wants to take in all of it but he wants more to not look rude, so he stops in front of the desk as Dumbledore walks around and sits down.

Dumbledore doesn’t say anything, so finally Harry asks, “Why were people looking for me, sir? It’s not curfew yet, I don’t think.”

“You are correct, Harry. But when Professor Snape was informed that you were not in the dormitory, he asked the portraits where you were. You are aware that the school’s portraits can speak to one another and share information, are you not?”

Harry glances at the portraits around the room, but most of them seem to be sleeping, or at least pretending to be. “No, sir.”

“Ah. Well, they can. When the portraits were unable to locate you, he became suspicious that you were in the forbidden corridor on the third floor, as there are no portraits there. He then had me dispatch students to locate and return you. He was perhaps a bit…overzealous in his actions, but I must know—were you in that corridor?”

“No, sir. I was just sitting in an empty room.” He doesn’t think so, at least; he didn’t pay that much attention to where he was. “Does—does everyone know? Why they were looking for me, I mean? Sir.”

Dumbledore peers at him for a second, then shakes his head. “They were simply told to find you.”

“Can you not tell them? I don’t want everyone angry for having to look for me when I was just, uh, thinking.” And he doesn’t want the other Slytherins thinking he’s a coward for having run away just because Professor Snape was mean to him.

Dumbledore keeps looking at him like he thinks he’s going to see something on Harry’s face that Harry isn’t saying, and then he says, “Very well. We will inform the students that this was a test of upper students’ ability to navigate the school, and that you were chosen because of your recognizability.”

“Can—can you say that I didn’t know? Because I don’t want my friends thinking I tricked them.”

“We can say that you were an unknowing participant, though then you will need to be able to act as though it was a surprise for you as well. Do you think you can do that?”

Harry nods eagerly, amazed that Dumbledore agreed to all of this. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Dumbledore flicks his wand, and something small and silver like a bird comes out; he says something quietly to it, and it flits away. Harry turns to watch it go, then looks back when Dumbledore says, “Professor Snape and a prefect will be on their way shortly. Before they arrive, Harry, how are you finding the school so far?”

Harry shrugs, feeling a little intimidated. He doesn’t want to say that he’s scared, or that sometimes he feels like he doesn’t belong because all of the Slytherins know more than him and he’s worse at every subject and Professor Snape hates him, so he says, “It’s different, sir. There’s a lot I don’t know.”

Dumbledore smiles at him. “I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll try not to let you down.”

“You’ll do your best, I’m sure.” There’s a small chime, and he adds, “Your Head of House is here.”

Harry doesn’t see him, but a moment later the door opens and Professor Snape stalks in to the room, robe billowing behind him; Prefect Caster is a few steps behind him, and she gives Harry a small smile. He tries to smile back, but he’s shaking a little at the look of pure fury on Professor Snape’s face.

He moves towards Harry, then stops when Professor Dumbledore says, “Ah, Severus, thank you for your swift arrival.”

“I’ll be taking Mr. Potter now.”

“I think you’d better let Miss Caster do that; we have a few things to discuss first.”

Snape’s lip twitches. “I don’t think we need to discuss anything.”

“Wouldn’t you prefer to know who passed our little test, though?” The twitch in Snape’s eye is the only sign he has no idea what Dumbledore is talking about, which is impressive. Harry isn’t sure he could manage that. “Off you go, Mr. Potter; get some sleep.”

Nodding, Harry follows Prefect Caster out of the Headmaster’s office; Snape and Dumbledore don’t say anything before the door closes behind him.

They’re a few corridors away from the office, Prefect Caster slowing her stride so Harry can keep up without having to run, when Prefect Caster asks, “Test?”

Harry shrugs. “I’m, uh—Professor Dumbledore said he would let everyone know. I’m not sure.”

Prefect Caster stares at him for a moment, then laughs. “You’re going to want to learn how to lie better, snakelet. But if he is going to tell, I’ll let you get away with it.”

“He _is_ going to tell. Or he said so, at least.”

“So it’s the ‘not sure’ that was a lie. Be careful how you cover up your lie; if you hadn’t said that, I might have thought that Dumbledore had never said that, and when he never announced it you would be able to say that he had told it to you and simply hadn’t followed through on it. If you wanted what you were doing covered up, that would be a safe way to do it; most people would forget by the time they realized Dumbledore was never going to tell it.”

Harry feels his face burning, but he asks, “Why would I want to cover it up?”

“Why are you lying right now?”

Right. “I just don’t want to sound like a know-it-all, saying something before Dumbledore.” And he’s not positive how Dumbledore is going to put it, and he doesn’t want to contradict him.

She nods as they start down a set of stairs. “You’ll want to control that. Sometimes you’ll end up with information that you want to hold secret for whatever reason, and then it’ll be helpful to wait. Maybe you would be able to do something before anything else, something that wouldn’t be feasible to do once the information is out or if others know. On the other hand, it can be helpful to give out information before the official announcement or before anyone else releases it. You can control the flow of information, decide who knows it first, and it can increase your standing by showing that you have access. Not that you need to worry as much about the last part.”

“What do you mean?”

She taps on her legs a couple of times with her thumb, then says, “If you wanted power in our House, you could take it. You could offer a pledge of support or accept an allegiance pledge in response to a favor or a political vote that you can’t exercise until you take the Potter seat in the Wizengamot. You’re a child, so there are things that you can’t do for yourself yet, and whoever your guardians are aren’t particularly active or influential, or we would have heard about votes and policies in your name. Whoever you give power to act in your name, especially the first person, would gain a great deal of influence and so would be willing to do a lot for you.”

“Draco and Theo and others mentioned that I had a seat on…whatever that is, but that it’s empty until I get older, but they were also talking about people taking empty seats. How does that work?”

“All influential pureblood houses hold—or held—a seat in the Wizengamot to preside over trials and pass laws, among other things. If there is no direct heir of age and out of Azkaban, the seat remains open. People can petition to take over that seat until the heir either leaves Azkaban or becomes old enough to take it themselves. If there aren’t any heirs, the seat usually transfers back to the Ministry, though there have been petitions to take those over. This became important after the war, when so many of-age heirs were either dead or in Azkaban. Nobody holds the Black seat, for example, so Malfoy the younger should take it once he’s of age, without having to wait for his father to give him the Malfoy seat.”

“Do the Weasleys have a seat?” Ron never mentioned it, but it’s not the sort of thing they talk about.

She thinks for a moment, which gives Harry the chance to catch his breath before they start down another flight of stairs. Finally, she says, “I think the Weasleys lost their seat a couple generations back; I’m not sure why. But they’re also the last of the Prewetts, and there is a Prewett seat. I think it’s a petition seat, though, because they never claimed it.”

“What about the Potter seat?” He’s not sure he can call it his seat, because it doesn’t feel like his.

“There’s never been an approved petition to take the Potter seat. Dumbledore’s Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, and he’s blocked all of the petitions.”

“Could I just…appoint someone to it? If it’s mine?”

She looks sharply at him, her fingers tap even harder on her leg. “If you really want to know, I’ll find that for you and let you know. Do you want to know?”

Harry hadn’t really cared, it had just been an idle question, but now he’s a bit curious. There’s something that’s _his_ , or will be, and he feels as though he should control it. Because he has so few things that belong to just him. “Yeah. Please.”

Prefect Caster nods. “Give me a week. I want to make sure I’m right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should be up on Sunday. Hopefully.


	6. Chapter 6

The news of the “test” breaks while Harry sleeps—because apparently sleeping on the ground makes him tired, as he found when he lay down in bed and then opened his eyes a number of hours later. He casts the Tempus charm—the first charm the older students taught them because there are no windows in the dungeons—to find that it’s just before dawn.

He would stare at his Potions textbook normally, trying to learn something at all so he can try to impress Professor Snape, but he doesn’t think he can stomach trying to impress someone who flat-out hates him right now, so he grabs his Defense book instead. He feels like he would even like the class if it was taught by someone a little more useful than Quirrell, whose stutter and apparent fear of everything makes him boring and almost impossible to understand.

Because the idea of being able to protect himself and other people seems really nice. He’s never been able to stop people from hurting him, even though he heals faster than a lot of people seem to, and maybe knowing this would make it so Dudley or his Aunt and Uncle couldn’t touch him or the Gryffindors couldn’t throw things into his potions during class and trying to make them explode. And maybe he would be able to protect other people, too, because he sees people being hurt and he can’t do anything about it.

Blaise wakes up first, giving him a look that Harry doesn’t bother to read before tromping off towards the bathroom. Blaise doesn’t usually confront people about things, from what Harry can tell, he just listens and watches until he knows everything he wants to know.

When Draco wakes up, on the other hand, he launches himself off of his own bed and into Harry’s, shoving some of Harry’s papers aside and crumpling up one of them. Harry snatches that paper up, smoothing it out and sliding it into his textbook. Goyle gives a soft grunt at the noise, but doesn’t seem to wake up, mostly because few things shy of an actual explosion will wake him on weekends.

Harry rolls his eyes at Draco. “What?”

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?” He’s pretty sure he knows, but Prefect Caster’s words are still echoing in his ears, and he feels like he shouldn’t let on anything more than he has to. Also, it’s fun to irritate Draco, sometimes, as long as he doesn’t push too far. He’s pretty sure, at least. As long as he doesn’t do anything too overtly muggle or seem like he’s rejecting him.

“That’s right, Draco,” Theo puts in, and Harry jumps a little because he didn’t realize Theo was awake because his curtains are still closed. “Be _specific_.”

Draco turns to scowl at Theo’s curtains, then turns back to Harry to say, “That you were part of some test Dumbledore was running on the upperclassmen to see how well they knew the castle. That’s what the notice on the board said last night.”

“Well you know everything then, don’t you?”

Draco nudges his shoulder. “But is it _true_?”

Harry nods. “It was a test, but I didn’t know anything about it until after.”

“Who found you?”

“The Weasley twins.”

Draco’s voice turns outraged. “You let yourself be found by _Gryffindors_?”

Harry grabs the nearest paper that isn’t schoolwork and drops it over his face so he can hide from Draco; Draco snatches it off, and as he does, Harry spots something on it. He grabs it back. “Wait, what is this?”

Draco rolls his eyes. “It’s the _Daily Prophet_ from a couple days ago. That’s not what we’re talking about.”

“But this vault that was robbed—Hagrid was at this vault, that day, and he took something out of it.”

“I don’t _care_.” Draco pulls the paper away again, swatting at Harry with it, and he ducks instinctually because for a second Draco is Aunt Petunia with a frying pan or Dudley with whatever he can find that day. But now Draco’s looking at him weird, so he covers it with grabbing a piece of paper that’s on the way to falling off the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know. He told me afterwards. Why do you think I knew?”

“You should have known.”

Harry throws up his hands. “I didn’t know. Nobody tells me things. Why don’t you believe me?”

Draco stares at him for a moment, then relaxes a little. “Fine. I believe you. But a _Gryffindor_?”

“It was actually two Gryffindors,” Theo puts in, and Draco crumples up the _Daily Prophet_ to throw at him. It bounces off the curtains, and he growls at it. “I’m just trying to be _specific_.”

\--

A few days later they have their first flying lesson, and Harry is terrified. It sounds amazing—he’s dreamt of flying for his entire life, and to be able to do it for real would be glorious—but the brooms on the ground look more like something he should be swatting cobwebs with than something he should be sitting on.

Draco and Blaise and the rest of them are looking at it like its normal, and Ron gives him a moderately reassuring smile from across the line where he’s standing.

Madam Hooch organizes them all and has them call on their brooms, and Harry’s leaps up to him immediately. It likes him, and that makes him feel a little better. But then Longbottom is lying crumpled and whimpering on the ground and being carted off by Madam Hooch, and Harry has the thought that this school is absolutely barmy because now they’re all alone with only some instructions not to misbehave and magic sticks that let them fly.

Dudley would have been off flying and pelting people with sticks from the moment Madam Hooch turned her back.

Instead, Draco leans over and grabs a little glass ball from the ground, one that Harry recognizes as Longbottom’s toy for when he forgets things. Draco starts tossing it up and down, and it’s _glass_.

So Harry just sighs, holding out his hand. “Come on, Draco, give it to the Gryffindors. They can give it back to Longbottom.”

Draco sneers at him, and Harry sees Theo and Blaise take half-steps back; they’re not going to get involved. That’s okay. “Why should I? The little lard boy lost it; why shouldn’t I be able to keep it?”

“Because it’s not yours.”

Ron stomps over, arms crossed across his chest. He stands almost next to Harry, and even though Harry’s happy that someone’s standing with him, it’s probably not going to help with Draco right now. “Give it here, Malfoy.”

Sure enough, Draco’s sneer grow. “Come and get it yourself, Weasel, unless you’re afraid. In fact…” He steps up on his broom, taking to the sky. “You’ve probably never flown before, have you? It’s not like your atrocity of a family could afford one, not with all those children they need to feed. So why don’t you just stay down there, unless you think you can get it from me.”

Ron is starting to turn bright red, and he lunges for the nearest broom. “I’ll show you, Malfoy.”

Harry isn’t going to let Ron stand alone, though, so he grabs a broom and takes to the air, too, hovering up towards where Draco is. Draco scowls at him. “What are you doing?”

“We’re all going to get in trouble if you keep doing this, so just stop and give it back.” Out of the corner of his eye he sees one of the Gryffindors—Granger, maybe—talking to Ron, who’s still on the ground, but he can’t hear what they’re saying.

“How are you going to make me doing that?”

Harry lunges towards him, and Draco jerks back, a little fear appearing on his face for the first time. “Give it back.”

“Fine,” Draco snaps, then draws back his arm and pitches the ball. It flies past Harry over his head, and he twists in the sky, speeding after it.

The ball is hard to see, clear against the blue-and-gray sky, but it glints in the sunlight and he follows that sparkle of gold as it arcs and starts to fall. He can’t catch it before it’s falling, so he dives down with it, following its path, the sky and the castle rushing past him, faster and faster, and all he can see is the gold of the ball and the green of the grass. Just before it hits, his hand closes around it, and he pulls up sharply. The broom reacts slower than he feels like it should, the back of the broom skidding off of it, and he topples off of it, curling up so he hits his shoulder and rolls, holding everything fragile and important tucked inside.

There’s a moment of stunned breathlessness, all of the air punched out of his lungs by the impact, and then everything comes rushing back and he can hear the shouts past the roaring in his ears.

Ron reaches him first, and then Theo and Millicent, with everyone else rushing around behind, and when he squints up at the sky he can see Draco still hovering there, staring at him.

He’s about to extend an aching arm to Ron to hand the ball to him when a voice he doesn’t recognize demands, “First-years, out of the way.” Most of them jerk out of the way, enough for Harry to see someone in Slytherin colors looming over him, mostly blotting out the sun. “You. Anything broken?”

Harry gingerly feels the ball, then shakes his head. “No, sir.”

“Then up. With me.” The man hauls him upright by the arm not holding the ball—and, thus, the one that hurts less—and starts pulling him towards the castle. Terrified he’s about to be expelled, Harry hurries after him, half-jogging, half-tripping in his haste. He hears Ron calling after him, but the man doesn’t respond.

Finally, once they’re in the castle, Harry asks, “Where are we going, sir?”

“Snape.”

He’s definitely being expelled.

So he keeps quiet on the way down, because if he’s going to be expelled he’d rather not be beaten for his insolence too, clutching the ball in one hand and trying to hold on to his wand with it as well because he won’t be able to keep it once it’s snapped.

Snape looks up at the two of them when the man pushes into his office, a sneer growing on his face when he spots Harry. “Mr. Flint, what precisely are you doing with Mr. Potter when he, at least, should be in class?”

The man—Flint, Harry guesses—grabs the ball out of Harry’s hand, tossing it to Snape, who catches it, examining it with disinterest. “He caught that in a fifty-foot dive and pulled off what would have been a perfect Wronski Feint if he hadn’t tumbled off his broom at the end.”

One eyebrow goes up as Snape surveys the two of them. “And why did you see it fit to inform me of this fact?”

“I want him as Seeker.”

Harry blinks at him. He’s not being expelled.

“You already have a Seeker, Mr. Flint, and a decent one at that.”

“Yes, sir, but Higgs is just as good a Keeper. And everyone who’s seen him play, sir,” Flint continues flatly, “knows that Bletchley couldn’t defend the goals if he were the size of one of them.”

“First-years don’t play,” Snape says, but he’s staring at Harry again. “Though Professor Dumbledore may be more likely to make an exception for Mr. Potter, being who he is.”

For the first time, Flint seems to actually look at Harry. Or, more specifically, his forehead. “Potter. Missed that.” He looks at Snape again. “Will you try, sir?” It sounds less like he’s asking a favor and more like he just wants a confirmation of a fact.

After a second, Snape inclines his head slightly. “I want to see him compete against Higgs, first, but yes, Mr. Flint, I will try. Leave us, now. I wish to speak to Mr. Potter alone.”

Flint nods, then heads out of the room; the door closing behind him sounds a bit ominous for Harry’s taste, like he’s being sealed inside a room with just Snape. He stays where he is as Snape examines him like he’s a wilted Potions ingredient.

Finally, Snape says, “If I find out that you somehow convinced Mr. Flint to allow you this opportunity, you will have detention from now until Christmas, and you will never be allowed on the team. Do you understand me, Mr. Potter?”

Harry nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Do not let it go to your head.” With a flick of his wand he sends the ball flying at Harry, who plucks it out of the air. It stings his hand a little; Snape’s eyes narrow. “Return that to whatever dunderhead lost it. And do not take your place on the team for granted; I will only allow it if the Headmaster gives the permission, and if you truly do outperform Mr. Higgs.”

Harry nods again.

“Then get out of my sight.”

\--

Longbottom is still in the hospital wing and Harry doesn’t want to go in there, so Harry finds Ron, handing over the ball. “Can you give this to Longbottom?”

Ron nods, sticking it in his robe pocket. “Thanks.” He flushes a little. “And thanks for standing up to Malfoy. You didn’t have to.”

“I don’t like it when people are bullies.” Harry shoves his hands in his robe pockets, clutching at his wand. He starts to turn away, because he needs to go find out how mad Draco is at him and how unpleasant it’s going to be to sleep in the Slytherin dormitory that night, but Ron catches his arm; it’s the arm that hurts, but he tries to hide his flinch.

“What happened? After the Slytherin took you away? Where did you go?”

Harry looks back at him. “Uh, he brought me to Snape. I need to—I’ll tell you later.”

Ron stares at him for a second, then nods. “Okay.”

Harry grins at him, then turns and jogs away.

He finds Draco sitting on a couch in the Slytherin common room, shoulders ducked and hair falling in a way that Harry is already starting to figure out means that he’s upset. He shows his feelings on his face, Harry’s found, and on his shoulders.

Harry sighs as quietly as he can, then sits down on the couch next to him. Draco clearly notices him from the way his shoulder hunch even further, but he doesn’t acknowledge him. Harry resists the urge to sigh again. “Draco—”

“You made our House look weak. And you made _me_ look weak, and like I’m not your friend.”

“You are my friend.”

Now Draco turns on him, and his eyes are bright. “Then why did you argue with me?”

“Because I don’t like bullies.”

Pink blooms high on Draco’s sharp cheeks. “I’m not a bully.”

Harry scrubs his hand against his leg. His arm is aching, and he knows from experience that it’s bruised. It’s probably going to be purple later, though not that handprint purple from Dudley or the sharp lines of being shoved into the side of his cupboard by Uncle Vernon. “What would you call it, then?”

Draco’s lip twitches. “It was just a bit of fun.”

“Were you going to give the ball back?”

Draco rolls his eyes. “If he lost it, it’s not like he should get it back.”

“It was his.”

“So?”

So Harry knows what it’s like not to have much, and to have the little he has taken away because someone thinks it’s fun. “So that makes you a bully.”

Draco turns away, hair slashing across his face. “I don’t want to see you right now.”

Harry stands and walks away. He kind of doesn’t want to see Draco right now, either.

\--

Nobody talks to him that night, all of the first-years holding an uncomfortable silence where they would look at Harry and then look at Draco and then talk about something else. It’s oddly familiar, he thinks, because it’s just like the summer when the Dursleys realized they couldn’t keep treating him the way they were treating him but didn’t know how to treat him, so they just pretended he didn’t exist.

And he thinks, he can survive this. He survived that.

So he sits on his bed that night with the curtains drawn around it and does his homework, and sometime later he hears the other first-year boys come in, Theo and then Blaise and then Draco with Crabbe and Goyle, and he doesn’t say anything to them, and they don’t say anything to him.

When he’s finally lying down and staring at the ceiling, unbruised arm behind his head and bruised one cradled on his stomach where doesn’t hurt as much, he thinks that some people might be bothered by being ignored by all of their friends. And it’s not that it doesn’t bother him, because he wants Theo and Blaise and Draco to talk to him, and even Millicent and—sometimes—Pansy, but it doesn’t really hurt him when they don’t, because that’s what people do.

Draco’s powerful here, because of his father and his family’s money, just like how Dudley was powerful in their school because he was bigger and stronger than most of the other people, and more willing to be mean and violent. And so it makes sense that the rest of them follow his lead, just like people did with Dudley back in Little Whinging. Harry doesn’t hold it against them.

With that thought in mind, and his arm throbbing in time with the beat of his heart, Harry falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's pretend it's still Sunday.


	7. Chapter 7

Draco still isn’t talking to Harry the next morning judging by the glare on his face as they pass each other in the loo, so Harry heads down to breakfast alone, taking his History of Magic book with him. He’s fairly certain he’s going to fail History of Magic no matter how much he studies considering that he can’t stay awake during the class to save his life, but he doesn’t want to keep staring at his Potions textbook, and sitting with a book is better than wallowing in being alone. And it’s not like what some of his Housemates think, that he’s really a Ravenclaw in snake’s clothing; he couldn’t care less about the Goblin Wars or Charms theory, but it was made clear that if they failed they would be punished, and he wants to avoid that at all costs.

Chewing on a piece of bacon as he turns a page, he reaches for his glass—and his hand closes around a piece of paper, instead. Startled, he pulls the bacon out of his mouth, then looks at the paper. On it in loose scrawl are the words _8pm, Quidditch Pitch._

Harry’s stomach closes up, and he pushes his plate away, the idea of eating anything else abruptly making him feel sick. He’s going to have to fly in front of Professor Snape and probably lots of other people, and he’s only ever flown once, and this was a terrible idea.

Though, of course, when he inevitably fails, they won’t push for it, and maybe they’ll leave him alone.

Which is maybe more unnerving, though, is that he didn’t notice anyone putting the paper down, even though they must have leaned over him to put it there. Though maybe someone just magicked it near 84him. That seems most likely, considering that he has no idea what’s possible with magic, but it seems like that would be.

He shoves the paper in his pocket because it’ll make him nervous if he keeps look at him. People are filling in to the Hall now, too, and he wants as few people as possible to know about what is going to a disaster.

Millicent sits down next to him, grabbing some porridge from near him. “You’re really good at making Malfoy mad.”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t like bullies. And I’m surprised you’re talking to me. I thought everyone was ignoring me until Draco said I was okay again.”

To his surprise, she laughs. “Oh, no, that had nothing to do with Malfoy. Or, well, not much. There was a lot of debate over whether it was better to anger the Malfoy heir or Harry Potter, or whether standing up for a pureblood made it worth standing up to a Slytherin in public.”

“What did you decide?”

“I decided such petty squabbles are beneath me, and it reflects poorly on Malfoy for him to risk his relationship with you over something as unnecessary as this.”

Harry blinks at her. “You don’t talk like an eleven-year-old.”

“I am the only heir to a pureblood family in the Sacred 28. I don’t have beauty, so I need to have my words.”

Harry stares at her for a moment as she starts taking delicate bites of her porridge, then blurts out, “This isn’t going to make me not be friends with Draco. Unless he doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore.”

She smiles but doesn’t respond.

\--

Harry’s arm looks horrid by the time he get out to the Quidditch pitch at eight, all mottled and blue-purple from where his entire body landed on it when he smashed into the ground, so he just pulls his robe sleeve further down over it. It is one advantage of robes; it makes it easier to hide injuries.

Not that he’s really gotten many since he got to the school. A couple Gryffindors tripped him and he’s stumbled on a couple of stairs because there are just so many of them, but mostly people have just left him alone.

What looks like the entire Slytherin team is standing with brooms on the pitch when he gets there, and from what he can tell most of the Slytherin House—and then some—is sitting in the stands. Hopefully something beyond his making a fool of himself is happening tonight, because otherwise half of the school is going to watch him fail.

He heads over to Flint—the only person he has actually talked to in any sense of the word—who nods at him. “Potter. You ever played Quidditch before?” Harry shakes his head, and one of the people laughs. “This ought to be fun. Okay.” He pulls something small and glittering out of his pocket. “This is a snitch, and if you become our Seeker, your job will be to catch it. During matches you would be against the other team’s Seeker. Today, you’re going to be flying against Higgs.”

A guy near him nods. Harry nods back. Presumably that’s Higgs.

“We’re going to fly best out of three, so you’d better catch it fast, because I don’t want to be out here for the rest of my life.” Flint hands over a broom. “I’ll release it once you’re in the air.”

Harry mounts the broom, feeling a bit silly, and takes to the sky. It takes him a second to not feel like he’s about to topple over sideways, but he knows he can’t take too long because Flint could release the snitch—whatever that is—at any time, and Higgs actually knows what he’s doing. So he hovers to a decent height and fixes his eyes on Flint, who’s still on the ground, closed first held high; a few of the team members have taken to the sky, while the rest are standing around Flint.

Flint’s hand opens, and Harry sees something golden and glittering dart out of it and disappear into the darkness.

 _That_ ’s what he needs to catch? A tiny flying thing?

But Higgs is already moving, so Harry keeps one eye on him and one eye looking for the tiny stupid flying gold ball.

But what he needs to look for, he realizes, is reflections off of the light. There isn’t that much light, given how dark it is now, but people have lights coming out of their wands, and there aren’t that many things in the sky that should shine.

So Harry flies up higher, unfocusing his eyes to take in as much of the air as he can. He’s not sure if the snitch can just fly out of the stands and leave, but assuming it can’t—or at least hasn’t—it should be glittering somewhere nearby.

And sure enough, he sees a glimmer of light half a field away from where Higgs is hovering; he dives for it, keeping his eye fixed on the point of light as it starts to move and dodge; he twists his broom around as the snitch moves, and it responds slower than he would like but still so fast, wind rushing through his hair. He leans forward on his broom, reaching out—

And his hand closes around the small metal ball, wings flapping against his fingers.

Exhilaration flowing through his veins, he flies back down to where Flint is standing, holding the snitch out to him; the bruise on his arm gives an unhappy twinge as he unclenches his hand.

Flint nods, taking the snitch back. “I’ll release it again once you’re back up there.”

Higgs catches the next one, performing a twist _around_ Harry that makes him stop and stare because it’s _amazing_. He has to learn how to do that.

As Higgs is giving the snitch back to Flint, Harry tries it, getting his broom to rotate midair, which he realizes while upside is absolutely terrifying and he’s way too high up to actually do that. But he keeps going because he has to get back upright, clinging on to his broom the entire way, breath coming hard and fast. Maybe he should have done that lower down, and also after he’s done with this whole thing so he doesn’t need to focus on the tiny flying thing that he’s supposed to catch.

But it doesn’t seem to matter, because he can’t see it even though he knows Flint released it, and it doesn’t look like Higgs can see it either.

It gets cold as he hovers there, and he knows that there’s some sort of warming charm but he has no idea what it is so he just pulls his robe tighter around him and keeps on scanning the ground below. He wants to catch it because he wants to win, but almost just as strongly now he wants to be able to go inside, and he can’t do that until one of them catches it.

It reminds him a bit of those couple of times the Dursleys told him to do chores outside at night and then locked up with him still outside, except they only did it in the winter once and the wind usually wasn’t this bad on the ground. On the other hand, he will be able to go inside during the night, probably, and he has robes that are a little warmer than what he wore at the Dursleys.

Finally, fed up and bored, he leans back so his spine is resting against the broom, keeping himself as still as possible so as not to pitch over sideways and fall off.

Staring up at the sky, he lets out a slow breath, watching the stars glittering above him. They don’t usually get nights this clear.

Even as he thinks that, a cloud passes across the sky, blocking out all of the stars—except one, small and glittering gold.

_The snitch._

Harry snaps upright, almost unbalancing himself, then starts flying higher and higher, trying to get to it. He’s not sure how far it is, because it’s just a point of light.

A point of light that starts moving as he gets closer to it, swooping sideways and then down, and he’s diving, chasing it, Higgs gaining on him. He twists away from Higgs, moving into an almost vertical dive, ground with point of light rushing towards him, and he reaches his arm out, stretching, stretching, legs tangled around his broom to keep from falling off or having it shoot from under him, and Higgs is right there, right behind him, his hand next to Harry’s, and the snitch darts and Harry’s hand closes.

Metal meets his palm, startlingly cold, and he winces as he pulls up sharply to keep from skimming the heads of the people standing on the ground, then lowers himself down and stumbles on to the ground.

Higgs lands gracefully next to him, patting him on his bruised shoulder. “Nice catch, Potter.”

Harry grins at him. “Thanks.” He holds the snitch out to Flint, who takes it, pocketing it. “That was fun.”

Flint reaches out, ruffling his hair. “Glad you didn’t make a fool out of me in front of Snape.” Harry flinches a little, because Professor Snape was there, watching him. “Well, you’re not on the team yet, because Dumbledore still needs to give permission, but that was a good run.” He clasps Harry on his bruised arm, and Harry can’t hide the flinch because the combination of cold and strain is not making it happy. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

Harry shakes his head, pulling his arm against his chest, but Flint grabs it, shoving his robe sleeve up. Harry tries to pull away; it doesn’t work. “It’s fine.”

“ _Lumos_.” Flint holds his wand, tip glowing, near Harry’s arm, showing the bruise in stark relief. “Bloody hell, Potter. This from your fall?” Harry nods. “Why didn’t you ask Snape for bruise potion?”

Harry hadn’t realized that was even a possibility. “I…didn’t want him to think I was whining about the pain.”

It looks like Flint’s eyes narrow, but he lets go, saying, “I’ll get some from him, this time, when I ask him about what Dumbledore said. Anyway, Potter, how are you at maths?”

Harry shrugs. “I went to normal—I mean muggle school before here, so I’m okay at it, I guess.”

“If you’re the Seeker, you need to always know whether catching the snitch will win the team the game. It’s worth 150 points. I’ll have Higgs test you on that later. Right now, it’s too bloody cold to stay outside.”

\--

Draco hops on to Harry’s bed almost before Harry gets himself settled on it, landing on Harry’s arm and sending bolts of pain through it. He yanks his arm away with a hiss, though Draco doesn’t seem to notice, demanding, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Harry drops his head back on his pillow. He’s too tired for this. “You weren’t talking to me. When was I supposed to tell you?”

“You should have told me anyway. I’m your _friend_.”

Harry shrugs. “You know now. And are you talking to me again?”

“Of course I’m talking to you again. Does this mean you’re on the team now? How is that going to work? Are you allowed to be on the team? First-years aren’t allowed to be on teams.”

“Professor Snape is asking Dumbledore. They probably won’t let me do it, but…” He shrugs. “They told me to show up to this. I don’t actually know how good I am at it. It took forever to catch that last one.”

“You’re great at it. They have to let you be Seeker.”

“Oy, Potter.” Harry sits upright in the bed to see Flint standing in the doorway. Flint tosses a vial at him, and Harry snatches it out of the air before it can hit Malfoy in the head. “Put it on your arm, and next time you don’t go to Snape I’ll make you go to Pomfrey.”

Draco hurtles off of the bed towards him. “What did Professor Snape say? Is he on the team?”

Flint sneers at him. “When Snape has an answer, you will not be the first person told. Put the damn potion on.” And then he turns and walks out of the first-year dormitory.

Draco spins back around to look at Harry. “What’s he talking about? What’s wrong with your arm?”

“Nothing.”

Before Harry can stop him, Draco reaches out and snatches the vial out of Harry’s hand, holding it up to the light. “This is a bruise potion.”

“How do you know that?”

“My mother is a more than competent potioneer. Answer the question.” Harry sighs then pulls his robe sleeve up to show the bruise covering his entire right arm. Draco gasps. “What—what happened?”

“The catch during class, I landed on my arm. It’s fine, it just looks bad.”

Draco lets out a low hiss, then opens up the vial and pours some of it into his hand. “Give me your arm.”

“I can put it on.” Draco glares at him, and he holds his arm out, pulling his sleeve back. Draco slides his potion-covered hand across Harry’s arm, coating it in what feels a bit like slime, and his hand is…gentle. Not gentle enough to make it not hurt, but enough to not press and make it hurt worse. As he’s working, Draco asks, “Why didn’t you get this before?”

Harry shrugs. “I didn’t know I could.”

“Of course you could get this from Professor Snape. He’s the Potions Master.”

“I didn’t even know this sort of thing existed.” His arm is already starting to hurt less, and the bruise looks like it’s aging as he watches. “That’s so cool.”

Draco doesn’t seem to be over it, though. “But you were going to go to Madam Pomfrey, then, right? If you didn’t know Professor Snape could do anything about it?”

“Not really. I mean, muggles can’t do much about bruises.”

“Well stop thinking like you’re a muggle. You’re not.” He punctuates that with a press of more bruise potion into Harry’s arm, and Harry flinches away.

\--

The next morning he gets a school owl during breakfast; it lands next to the owl from Draco’s mother, which is still recovering from delivering what looks like an entire shop’s worth of chocolate and, weirdly, one orange, and pecks at Harry’s finger until Harry takes the letter and feeds part of a piece of bacon. The bird eats the bacon with a few delicate bites, groom’s Harry’s hair to Blaise and Theo’s amusement, and then takes off again.

Harry opens the letter, ignoring Draco peering over his shoulder, to see in Professor Snape’s spiky writing, _Professor Dumbledore has given his permission. You will attend all practices and games. If you miss a practice because you receive detention, you will be removed from the team. This is not a reward for your fame.—SS_

Draco crows next to him. “Oh, I have to tell my father. I told you you’d get in.”

Ron is a little more torn about the idea. “That’s great, mate, and you must be the youngest Seeker in, what, a century? And I think your dad played, too. But—well, when you’re playing Gryffindor, I have to cheer for them, instead.”

Harry shrugs. “That’s okay. I wouldn’t expect you to cheer for me.”

“I’ll cheer for you for the other games,” Ron hurries to tell him. “Not the snakes, probably, but you.”

Harry grins at him. “Brilliant.”

George—Fred? No, that looks like George—pops up behind Ron, ruffling his hair and grinning at Harry. “We heard you made the Slytherin team.”

Fred, from behind Harry and making him jump, says, “We’re beaters, ourselves.”

“For Gryffindor, of course.”

“So we’ll try not to be too hard on you.”

“Bludger here.”

“Bludger there.”

“Won’t aim for your head.”

“Maybe just break a bone.”

“Or two.”

Harry can tell they’re just teasing, and he’s glad that the Weasleys aren’t mad at him even though he’s going to have to be against them, so he grins at them. “I’ll just have to make sure we win faster, then, before you can get me.”

“You can try,” George says.

Fred ruffles Harry’s hair, and Harry ducks out from under his hand, smoothing his hair back down. “First game's Gryffindor-Slytherin,” Fred tells him. “So we’ll get to test that soon.”


	8. Chapter 8

Two days later comes with four owls depositing a wrapped broomstick on to Harry’s—and Draco’s and Blaise’s—plate; Goyle picks his up out of the way and keeps eating without otherwise seeming to notice the disruption. There’s a note attached to the wrapping in writing Harry vaguely recognizes but knows doesn’t match any teacher he’s had, and he grabs that first, opening it to read,

 _Dear Mr. Potter,_ _No Quidditch player should be without a broom. We have heard much about you and hope to soon meet the boy who has befriended our son. Yours, Narcissa Malfoy, Lady Malfoy._

Below it is a wax seal with an imprint that looks like a wand threading vertically through a B with a bird behind it.

Next to him, Draco gasps, “My mother.”

Harry squints at the seal. “Why isn’t it an M?”

“She is originally from the House of Black, and so her personal seal reflects that. Though why she used that seal instead of the family one…” Draco shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. Open it.”

“I’m not going to open it here. I’ll open it back in the dormitory.”

Draco scowls at him. “Why not?”

Harry flicks his gaze up towards the Head Table. “For one thing, Professor Snape is glaring at me. And I’d rather not deal with all of the fuss.”

“But it’s not as though it’s not already obvious what you have. And think of how jealous the Gryffindors will be.”

Harry really doesn’t want to open this with Snape glaring at him like that. “But won’t it be better if we make them wonder what it is?”

Draco stares at him for a moment, then grins. “You’re thinking like a Slytherin. I like that.”

They go back to eating, though Harry can’t take his eyes off of the wrapped broom sitting in front of him. Finally, he asks, “Do you think she sent me an old one of yours? An old broom, I mean?”

Draco looks horrified. “An old broom? My mother would only sent you the best of brooms, not some old hand-me-down of mine.”

Harry feels his shoulders starting to tighten; none of this makes any sense. “But why would she do that? She doesn’t know me. And I’m not—I’m not anything to her.”

“You’re Harry Potter—people have probably been giving you things your entire life. I’m sure you have a vault somewhere with all of the gifts you received after defeating He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. But also you’re my friend and she knows that her getting you this would make me happy.” Draco shoves at him a little, and Harry swallows down his instinctive flinch. “What’s wrong with you today? You’re the youngest seeker in decades, and now you have a broom so you don’t have to use those ratty old school ones. Smile. You’re making me sad just looking at you.”

\--

They unwrap the broom as soon as they get to the common room, Harry trying to hide his shaking fingers as he tears at the paper. Inside is a beautiful broom, smooth and shining and sleek. The end has, in beautiful gold lettering, the words “Numbus 2000”.

Draco traces the lettering. “It’s too bad you couldn’t have waited a year, until the 2001 is out.”

Harry runs a hand across the broom, ignoring the oohs and ahhs around him. “I love it.” He tears his eyes away from the gleaming wood to look at Draco. “Can I—if I give you a letter, can you send it to your mother? I’m not sure your address.”

Draco blinks at him. “Sure, though you can just write her name and tell your owl to deliver it to her. But I can mail it if you want.”

“Oh.” Harry shakes his head. “No, I’ll do it. I want to thank you.” He goes back to stroking the bristles. “I love it. I’ve never had anything so nice.”

That gets him a weird look, but he doesn’t really care, because he’s busy examining the broom from every angle. He can’t wait to fly it.

\--

“I’m so bored.” Draco flops onto the couch, head landing on Harry’s legs and nearly upsetting the pile of papers in his lap. He stiffens at the contact, casual and not at all violent, but Draco doesn’t seem to notice. “Everyone’s off playing gobstones or some other such nonsense, or _studying_.”

“I’m studying,” Harry points out.

Draco snorts. “Being a self-sufficient little Slytherin, aren’t you? You can ask for help when you’re confused, you know. Snape told us that.”

He has said they were supposed to, in fact, but, “He hates me, though. Snape, I mean.”

“Snape doesn’t hate Slytherins. Just because he was going at you in the first class—”

“He kicked me out of the session for muggleborns,” Harry says miserably.

Draco sits up, twisting so he can look at Harry, and Harry thinks he might actually miss the contact. “You’re not a muggleborn.”

“I was muggle-raised, though. I don’t know any of this stuff. But Snape said that—that because I was halfblood, I had to get out and not waste his time.” Draco is still staring at him, so he ducks back down to stare at his Potion’s textbook, face burning. He hadn’t been planning on saying anything, but Draco was there, and once the first part had slipped out he had had to explain the rest.

“Merlin,” Draco breathes after a long tense moment of him staring at Harry and Harry reading the same sentence about how to cut bat wings over and over. “I’ll—I’ll go talk to him. Tell him you need to learn it too, and—”

“ _No_ ,” Harry snaps, then softens his voice at the hurt look on Draco’s face to say, “No, thanks. I don’t want to make things hard for you with him.”

“Fine,” Draco says, sitting back and giving Harry an unnervingly smug smile. “I’ll teach you.”

“What? You—”

“That’s right.” Draco twists around and lays back down, setting his head on Harry’s knee. “I know all of it, and more than what he would teach, anyway. It’ll be brilliant.”

\--

It isn’t brilliant. Draco, apparently taking the role of instructor seriously, shows up two days later with four massive books from the library, which he drops in Harry’s lap, narrowly missing Blaise’s head. Apparently lying all over each other is a Slytherin practice, though one only done in the common room where nobody outside the House can see; Harry can’t imagine himself being comfortable enough to have his head in anyone’s lap, or on their chest, or against their back as they lay sprawled on someone else. The touch is nice, though, something other than punches or shoves or frying pans that makes something inside of him relax just a little.

“These are on wizarding culture,” Draco tells him. “ _Real_ wizarding culture. Once you’re done with them, we can talk.”

Harry looks down at them in horror; he has so much work to do already. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

Blaise laughs. “Want to be a Professor one day, Draco? You can replace Binns. They’d all thank you for that.”

“I would teach Potions,” Draco replies haughtily. “Not something useless like History of Magic. The _Goblin Wars_.” He mock-shudders, and they all laugh. “Anyway, Harry, you’re going to have a lot to catch up on. You don’t even know the genealogies, do you?”

Harry shakes his head. He’s not positive what that word even means, though he’s pretty sure it has to do with families. “No.”

“I’ll start drawing up trees for you. Mother always told me I needed to practice, and I suppose this is as good an opportunity to do so as I’ll ever find. I’ll ask her for a copy of all of the seals in my next letter—you should be able to identify those on sight. Family seals and personal ones, though I suppose you can start with the family ones. And you _need_ to learn how to hold a quill properly. You write like a child.”

\--

A few days later, on Friday after another horrible Potions class where Harry bumbles his way through to the point where even Draco snickers at him when he mixes up bratus seeds with iterbratus seeds and has his potion turn to sticky purple sludge, Harry gives in and goes to find Prefect Caster.

She’s in the corner of the library bearing a hooded robe to shades her face as she reads one of the thickest books Harry’s ever seen. She looks up when he stands behind the chair across from her. “What do you need, snakelet?”

Harry scuffs his foot a little, then says, “Professor Snape said that we’re supposed to ask for help if we’re having trouble in class, and I’m trying to learn Potions but there are too many things I don’t know and everyone expects us to know it without any trouble and I don’t know what’s going on.”

Prefect Caster pushes her hood back, surveying him for a moment. “And this is you asking for help?”

Her tone is neutral, but Harry shrinks in on himself a little anyway. “Ah, yes. Please. Not from—well, not necessarily from you, but you’re a prefect and I figured you would know who could help me.” He hadn’t really wanted to ask, but they had said that if they were doing poorly and didn’t ask, they would get in trouble. He doesn’t want to get in trouble.

“I am in NEWT Potions, but you would likely benefit from somebody in their fourth or sixth year who can spare you the time. The fact that you’re talking to me suggests that you are not looking for help from Professor Snape.” Harry grimaces before he can help himself, and a smile grows on her face. “I thought not. I’m not sure why you have such problems with Professor Snape, but there are certainly sixth-years who are more than qualified to help you. I will find one for you.”

“Thank you.”

He starts to turn to go, but Prefect Caster stops him, saying, “While you’re here, Potter, we should talk.” She gestures with her chin towards the chair. “Sit.”

He sits.

“Is something wrong, or…?”

Prefect Caster shakes her head. “No, nothing’s wrong. I just have an answer to the question you asked me.” Harry can’t remember what he asked her, and that must show on his face, because she says, “I have information on the Potter seats of the Wizengamot, if you’re still interested.”

Harry nods, sitting up a little straight. “Oh, yeah.”

“First, are your guardians—the people you live with, the people who take care of you—muggles?”

He doesn’t really want to talk about the Dursleys with Prefect Caster, who seems cool and nice and so different from them. He’s not ashamed of being related to muggles, but he is ashamed of being related to them. “Why?”

“The options you have depend on it.”

Harry nods. “They are. Muggles, I mean.”

“Okay.” She taps the feather end of her quill on the edge of the book. “For Wizengamot seats where the only living heir is underage, they can appoint a regent to vote for them until they come of age. If your guardians were wizards, they would usually be the regents, or else they would need to appoint them, but because your guardians are muggles, you get the choice. It’s not like a petition where Chief Warlock can block it—like he’s done with the Potter seat—because it’s still your seat, you just can’t hold it yet.”

That makes sense, Harry thinks, though the whole thing seems rather complicated and a bit silly. The idea that he could pick someone at eleven is totally barmy. He could pick _anyone_ , and they could be terrible at it, and then it would be bad. For that matter, once he got old enough, he could be terrible at it, and nobody would be able to stop him from making bad choices because he wasn’t elected.

“Could I pick you?”

She goes still for a second, the kind of still like when Harry thinks he’s going to hit and doesn’t want to attract attention and make it worse, or like when Draco really wants something and is pretending not to because he thinks it’s undignified. Finally, she says, “A less cautious person would consider that an offer.”

Harry shrugs. It had been more of a question than anything else, but it’s not like he has any other options, and he likes her. She seems smart. “You are one of the only magic adults I know—if you’re of age, I mean—and you seem smart. But I don’t know—if they’re seats for purebloods, can only purebloods be appointed? How does that work?”

“Any witch or wizard can be appointed. The seats are associated with pureblood lines, but you are not a pureblood and you will hold the Potter seat once you turn of age.” She licks her lips. “If you are serious about the consideration of appointing me the regent of the Potter seat to hold until you come of age, I suggest waiting until the end of the year—the school year—to do so.”

Harry blinks at her. “Why? I thought you wanted power.”

“I do, but there are two things to note. First, while I am still in school, also holding Wizengamot seat would take up a significant amount of my time. I would likely be unable to perform my prefect duties, prepare for my NEWTS, and adequately represent you in the Wizengamot.”

That makes sense. “Okay.”

“And secondly, taking the seat constitutes some level of risk to me. While it is true that the appointment would provide me with a great deal of power and influence, you would ultimately have control over whether I served as your regent. Should I act in a way that displeased you or you felt ultimately did not represent your views, you would be within your purview to dismiss me immediately. That dismissal would ultimately be extremely damaging to my reputation and would harm my chances at success much more so than simply not taking the seat would. Do you understand?”

Harry thinks he does, though the way she talks keeps getting more and more formal and she used a few words he’s not sure he knows. “Yeah.”

“So I suggest that, for this year, we work to clarify your political positions. We will use the time to ensure you are certain you trust me to adequately represent you at the Wizengamot and that I trust you to not dismiss me without sufficiently damning reason. Is this acceptable to you?”

Harry nods. “Yeah, that works.”

She smiles a little, but it still has echoes of that careful stillness. “We will find a mutually agreed-upon time to meet so we can discuss your political opinions.” Suddenly, she grins. “Oh, and snakelet?”

“Yeah?”

“Congratulations on your Quidditch tryouts. I look forward to watching you fly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't remember if I mentioned this, but the Ministry basically doesn't seem to have a legislative branch, so I'm using the Wizengamot as both a judicial branch and a legislative branch (which is still sketchy, but less so than the Minister just making up laws and nobody really checking them or whatever happens in canon).


	9. Chapter 9

Harry buries himself deep into classes and practice. He finally has someone helping him with Potions, which means he finally has some concept of what’s actually going on. Instead of just ordering them to read a book and writing some instructions on the board, the tutor—a pureblood, Harry thinks, a sixth year named Clarice Silverstone—explains to him what ingredients are useful for and how to tell them apart and the theory behind how to use them.

And he loves it. Not the way Draco does—Draco likes the theory behind it, thinks it’s beautiful or something like that. Draco thinks Potions is art. Harry thinks it would be really useful to be able to make something that would heal his bruises when he’s home with the Dursleys.

He’s not really under any delusions. He knows things are going to be a whole lot worse when he goes home, unless he can figure out a way to make them afraid of him. Because they’re going to forget what Hagrid did, or they’re not going to forget it, and then he’ll be lucky if he leaves his cupboard—or his new bedroom—the whole year. So in the meantime, he needs to figure out how to make himself scary and he needs to learn how to survive.

Maybe he’ll be able to steal some healing potions before he leaves, if they don’t learn how to make them before then. He’s not sure how he’ll get them out from under Snape’s nose, but maybe he’ll need to ask Prefect Caster or someone for them.

So the next couple months are consumed with trying to learn potions and transfigurations and charms and how to catch a snitch and practicing doing subtraction quickly in his head so he’ll always know if they’re within 150 points of the other team if they’re down so he knows whether or not to catch the snitch

They’re learning levitation in charms, something Harry’s struggling a bit with but Theo and Millicent are really good at it, and even Draco and Blaise can make the feather fly a little. It must be a pureblood thing, he thinks, because he’s pretty sure they practiced magic before they got to Hogwarts. He would be jealous, but they help him with it sometimes, so he’s not too mad.

Ron seems about as unprepared as him, but he has a feeling Mrs. Weasley didn’t let them practice. Maybe they didn’t have enough wands or only rich purebloods are allowed to use magic before they get to school.

It’s Halloween by the time he actually figures out the date, and he’s been there for two months, and they’ve been the best two months of his life.

Harry is putting away his textbooks and trying to figure out how to store parchment without crumpling it—an ongoing fight for him—when the fifth-year male prefect—Prefect Walsh—walks into the room and announces, “First years, to the common room.” And then he looks at Harry, who gives up and just sticks the pile of parchment on his bed for the time being, and pales. “You can stay here until the feast if you want, Potter.”

Harry straightens, indignation flowing through him. “Why? I’m a Slytherin, too.”

The prefect stares at him for a second, then shrugs. “That’s on you.”

Harry hurries out after him, only flinching a little when Draco throws his arm around his shoulders. “Do you know what this is about?”

Draco shakes his head. “My father never mentioned this to me.”

“Maybe it’s new.”

Draco gives him a look. “This is Slytherin. We don’t change our traditions. More likely, it’s a secret. Though why you would be exempt, I don’t know.”

“Maybe Professor Snape doesn’t think I’m Slytherin enough to participate.”

Shoving Harry in the side, Draco says, “You’re Slytherin and that’s that. And he doesn’t hate you as much as you think he does.”

“You don’t know that.”

Draco looks like he wants to argue, but they’re at the common room now where all of the furniture has been pushed towards the edges so the entire center is open, and one of the prefects directs them towards the center. Harry squishes between Draco and Millicent in the inner ring of the circle, with the two seventh year prefects sitting back to back in the middle and the older years in ever-widening rings behind the first-years.

Prefect Caster is the prefect closer to Harry, though she’s mostly facing Crabbe, and she waits until everyone is sitting before saying, “We are gathered here on this Halloween to remember the events of October 31, 1981.” Everyone Harry can see—other than Prefect Caster—looks at him, which he’s kind of used to, though he has no idea why they would be doing it in this instance in particular.

Prefect Macnair takes over then, saying, “It is because of that day that we are free. We are a House of purebloods and of muggleborns; one would be enslaved, the other killed.”

“But through the actions of a pureblood and a muggleborn, we can stand for that which we believe, on whatever side that might fall.”

Prefect Macnair raises his wand. “To James Potter, who stood up to the Dark Lord and fell.”

Everyone in the circle raises their wand and says, “To James Potter,” except Harry, who didn’t know when his parents had died, who didn’t know they celebrated him, who had never heard his father’s name said with anything other than disdain or loathing.

Wand still up, Prefect Caster says, “To Lily Potter, who stood up to the Dark Lord and fell,” and everybody repeats, “To Lily Potter,” and Harry starts crying, silently, tears burning paths down his cheeks because nobody ever mentions his mother and because his parents are dead and he’s alone and he’s going to be alone for the rest of his life because his parents are dead, they’re dead, they’re dead.

Together, the two seventh year prefects say, “To Harry Potter, who stood up to the Dark Lord and did not fall,” and the room thunders with people saying, “To Harry Potter.”

And then, when the echoes die off, it is silent, and Harry can’t see through his tears. Draco’s hand closes around Harry’s, squeezing slightly.

Once the silence is absolute, Prefect Caster says, quietly, “We are not Gryffindors who value honor, nor Ravenclaws who value intelligence, nor Hufflepuffs who value loyalty. We are Slytherins, and we value success. We honor the Potters because they were successful, and because they saved us all, and we remember them so that we will not repeat the past. Do not forget.”

She stands, and Harry lets out a slow breath, as quiet as he can. He feels exhausted, drained.

Prefect Caster crouches down in front of him, brushing a few pieces of hair off of his forehead. Her fingers skirt around his scar, never quite touching it. “You okay, Potter?” Harry nods. “You want to go see Professor Snape?”

Harry shakes his head, pulls his hand away from Draco’s to wipe the tears from his face. “No,” he whispers. “No, I’m okay.”

She ruffles his hair, then stands. “Yeah, you are, Potter. You really are.” She turns and mutters something to Prefect McNair; Harry thinks he hears something about crying and teasing, but he’s not sure. Then raising her voice, she says, “Snakelets, it’s time for the feast.”

Everyone gets up and starts heading out of the common room, but Harry takes another minute before getting up because he really doesn’t want to look like he’s crying when he walks into the Great Hall. People stare at him enough, even now.

Finally, once he’s gotten himself under control, he stands, pushing a little again Draco. “Thanks for waiting for me.” Draco nods. “Did you know? That this is when my parents died, I mean.”

Draco hesitates, then starts walks towards the exit. Harry follows after him, and once they’re out of the common room, Draco says, “Everyone knows this is when the Dark Lord was vanquished, and that your parents died in the attempt.”

That makes Harry flinch, which is stupid, because of course everyone knows that. Everyone knows more about him than he does. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Draco shrugs. “They’re your parents. Why don’t you know this?”

“My Aunt and Uncle don’t talk about them.” Abruptly, Harry doesn’t want to talk about this. “Come on, let’s go. I don’t want to be last to the Great Hall.”

More people stare at him than usual when he and Draco walk into the Great Hall, though he know why now. He scrubs at his eyes one more time before heading in, and he knows that they’re bloodshot but from the way Draco is glaring if anyone says anything he might get Crabbe or Goyle to punch them in the face.  It’s a weird feeling for him, having someone be willing to hurt other people for him. Usually they just want to hurt him.

He has a feeling if Draco wasn’t his friend Draco would be on the other side of that.

But he’s not, so it’s okay. Harry doesn’t have the benefit of being picky.

The room is all fancy and full of even more candles than usual, and Harry thinks he would find it more exciting if he didn’t feel so miserable. Why didn’t he know this was when he parents died? Why didn’t anyone tell him? It’s something he feels like he should have known, that someone should have mentioned.

He sits down between Draco and Blaise, who immediately start arguing about some new version of something called wizarding chess. Apparently in this new version, the pieces were charmed by a chess champion and suggests moves that the champion charmed in, and Blaise says that that’s cheating. Draco says it’s not cheating if you know who to listen to.

And they ignore Harry, which he’s grateful for, because he’s still trying to get his emotions in check. Slytherins try to hide what they’re feeling, mostly, which is something Harry agrees with, but they also tend to spy on people who are showing emotions to use it against them later, and he’s so grateful that they’re willing to not look, to pretend he’s not doing it.

And maybe some of the other ones—maybe Theo, or Pansy, maybe Millicent if she’s in a bad mood—maybe they would use it against him, pick at the soft tender places because they can, and Blaise is noticing it, he knows, Blaise and Draco are because it’s what they were trained to do, what their parents made them into, but they’re being a shield, too.

So finally he gets himself together and stops picking at his food and starts actually eating it, and when he makes a comment about how maybe he should learn chess Draco manages to smirk at him and make a snide comment about how he’s not sure Harry’s brain can take that much planning.

Harry rolls his eyes back, asking, “Is that why you have to lay your clothing out the night before? Because you have to _plan_?”

Draco, who is good at many things but not waking up early, flushes high on his cheekbones. “It’s more efficient that way.”

“Oh,” Blaise puts in, aristocratic nose turned up. “Efficient?”

“Yes, efficient. I—” The doors swing open, and Professor Quirrell bursts into the Great Hall, running towards the Head Table. Everyone twists to look at him, the whole room going silent and then breaking into whispers.

He runs all the way up to the Head Table, then gasps out, “Troll. Troll in the dungeon. Thought you ought to know.” And then he drops into a dead faint.

The entire room erupts into noise, like static underneath the roaring in Harry’s ears. The prefects start herding them out of the hall, and Harry hears Draco say, “The dungeons? Why are we going to the dungeons if the troll is there?”

Harry thinks he might answer, but he’s not sure what he says, his mind going over and over through the thought of troll, troll, what the hell is a troll that people are so afraid of it? Though Quirrell is terrified of everything.

A hand plants between his shoulders, pushing, and he stumbles forward, finding himself pulled into the crowd. Mouth next to Harry’s ear, Draco snaps, “What are you doing? We have to move.”

Harry shakes his head, trying to clear it. While he’s trying to get himself together, Draco closes his hand around Harry’s, holding on a little too tight so Harry’s bones press together. He winces but doesn’t pull away.

They’re shorter than most of the people around them—or Harry is, at least—so Draco drags him between people in the crowd, going faster than everyone around them. Harry’s not really paying attention until suddenly they’re in a sea of red and gold and Ron is asking, “What are you doing here, Malfoy?”

Even in the middle of the chaos, Draco manages to sneer at Ron and say, “Following instructions, Weasley. With as large as your ears are, I’d think you’d be better at it.”

Ron half-lunges at him, and Harry gets between them. “Come on, stop.” They keep going, moving with the crowd, and then right when Harry and Draco are about to split off Ron freezes. An older Gryffindor almost runs into him, grumbling, and Harry yanks him out of the way of the crowd. “What?”

“Hermione.”

Harry blinks at him. “What?”

“Granger.” Ron flushes a dark red, and Harry hears Draco snicker. “She wasn’t at dinner. She might not know.”

“Why not?”

Ron grimaces. “Doesn’t matter.”

“We have to go warn her, then.”

“Harry—”

Harry turns on Draco. “Do you want to go down to the dungeons where the troll is?”

Draco scowls. “No, but I don’t want to help Granger, either. And why do you care so much about her? She’s a Gryffindor mu—she’s a Gryffindor.”

Harry shrugs, suddenly feeling a little uncomfortable. “It’s the right thing to do. Come _on_.”

Draco makes a face but follows, Ron rather dubiously leading the way.

It was a good plan, Harry thinks, except for the troll. Professor Snape didn’t even see them before heading off towards not-the-dungeon, and none of the prefects caught them, and Ron knew where he was going, but Harry’s now on the back of a troll with his wand jammed up its nose and everyone’s screaming and he has the brief, blindingly clear thought that he needs to make better plans.

Preferably plans without trolls.

Draco points his wand at the troll and shouts, “ _Flipendo_.” The troll skids back a few feet, Harry almost flying off of it, then steadies itself with a grunt and goes back to flailing. Harry sees him mouth an obscenity but even in this middle of this he apparently doesn’t want to be undignified enough to say it aloud.

Harry is about to yank is wand out and try to stab the troll in eye with it when Ron lifts his wand, swishes, flicks, and says, “Wingardium Leviosa.”

The troll’s fall hurts Harry down to his bones, and he manages to yank his wand out just soon enough to not have it snap when the troll hits the ground. He wants to just lay on the troll for a moment and catch his breath so he feels a little bit less like his ribs just collapsed in on themselves, but the smell is so bad that he clambers off, pressing a hand to his side. He aches, but it’s not the sort of ache that means something is broken.

Dudley broke a couple of ribs, once, from sitting on him, and another one was cracked, but these don’t feel like that.

Draco moves towards him, looking like he’s going to cling on to Harry the way people sometimes do in the Slytherin common room, and then his eyes flick to Ron and Hermione and he freezes.

Hermione is the one who speaks. “Is it dead?”

Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I think it’s just knocked out.” He looks at his wand, which is covered in greyish slime. “Ugh, troll bogies.” He crouches down and wipes it on the troll’s trousers; his ribs protest the movement.

There’s a slam in the distance and then the sound of running getting closer, and Harry realized that they must have been making an incredible amount of noise for people to have heard from downstairs. He’s about to suggest they figure out what to say when McGonagall bursts into the room, Professor Snape and Quirrell just behind her. Quirrell spots the troll and collapses against the wall, whimpering slightly.

Snape crouches down on the other side of the troll, examining it, but not before he gives Harry one of the most venomous looks he’s ever gotten, including from the Dursleys.

McGonagall turns on them. “What on earth were you thinking? You could have been killed. And this is nowhere near your dormitory, especially for the two of you.” She turns her fury on Harry and Draco like she thinks the troll was their idea.

Harry hesitates, and in that moment Hermione says, “Please, Professor McGonagall—they were looking for me.”

McGonagall tears her eyes away from Harry and Draco to look at Hermione. “Miss Granger!”

“While you are disciplining your students,” Snape says, rising to his feet in a movement more graceful than Harry could manage even when he wasn’t in pain, “I will discipline mine.” He turns towards the door with a snap of his robes. “With me.”

They follow.

Harry is shaking a little as they follow Snape’s brisk pace down the hallway. He’s never seen anyone look like they had a cane used on them, though he knows better than most that it doesn’t always show, especially if you know how to hide it, but if they don’t use a cane then they use magic, and he feels like that must hurt so much more. And Snape seems like he would be happy making it hurt. Not like Uncle Vernon, who just likes being mean and causing pain, but more because he likes rules and order and hates anyone who disrupts them.

They walk all the way down to the dungeons in silence, all the way until they’re in what Harry is pretty sure is Snape’s office with the door closed behind them. Only then does Snape demand, “Why did you not follow instructions and go to the dungeons?”

Harry doesn’t want Draco to be punished too, especially because Harry talked him into it, so he says, “It’s my fault, sir. Ron said Granger didn’t know about the troll because she wasn’t at the feast, so I said we should go warn her. Draco didn’t want to, but I talked him into it.”

Snape looks at Draco. “Is that the case?”

Draco hesitates, then nods. “Yes, sir.”

“And you didn’t think that this was not a wise decision?”

“If the trolls had been in the dungeons, sir,” Draco says, “it would have been safer to warn Granger than be in the common room. And—” He hesitates. “The hierarchy is unclear, sir, but on standing I’m outweighed.”

Harry’s not sure what that means, but Snape seems to, because he says, “Think of how you want to use that acquiescence, Mr. Malfoy, or you will end up undermining yourself. Detention, both of you, every week for a month. Mr. Potter, five points from Slytherin for poor decision-making. Mr. Malfoy, five points to Slytherin for useful, if ill-advised, inter-House cooperation. Now to the common room, both of you, and if you are anywhere else you will have detention from now until you leave for the summer. Do you understand?”

Harry and Draco nod. “Yes, sir.”

Harry waits until they’re out of the room with the door closed behind them before asking, “Why did he take points from me just to give you points?”

“So he could punish you without punishing Slytherin.” Draco grimaces. “He’s probably going to write my father.” He gives the password and they enter the common room. “I’m going to go—sleep, or something.” Draco detours off towards the dormitory, and Harry sits down on one corner of one of the couches, which are now back in their normal places.

Pulling his feet up, he pushes himself as far into the corner as he can get; there are people in the room, some of them eating food, but they mostly ignore him, which is good, because he’s still shaking. He wasn’t punished. And it might happen in the detentions, but the only thing that hurts is his ribs, and even that is fading.

\--

“Care to tell me why Mr. Potter is sleeping on the common room couch?”

There’s a brief silence, and then Prefect Caster says, “He went to the memorial.”

“And why, precisely, Ms. Caster, did you think it was a good idea to bring Harry Potter to the memorial for his own parents?”

“He decided to go.”

“For any particular reason?”

She hesitates, then says, “Honestly, sir, I’m not sure he knew it was when his parents had died. He seemed surprised.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Professor Snape says, “Thank you, Ms. Caster. You may leave now.”

There are footsteps on the ground, fading away, and then ones that approach, and Harry thinks of opening his eyes but they’re too heavy, and he’s not quite sure if he’s awake. And then there’s silence for so long he starts to slip back into oblivion. Before he does, something like a blanket settles on his shoulders, and then he’s asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is slightly late but I'm like two weeks late on a couple of things at school so THIS IS LESS LATE THAN IT COULD BE AND YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL.


	10. Chapter 10

November comes with cold air and Draco waffling back and forth for half an hour while staring at Harry before saying that Professor Snape’s leg is hurt and maybe that matters. Harry hadn’t really noticed that, as distracted as he was by the fear of being caned, and he thinks it might be important, but at the moment he has a bigger priority.

Quidditch.

His abject fear of failing everything and being kicked out or at the very least shaming Slytherin—a house he already doesn’t feel like he fits in to because a lot of his classmates were raised to be Slytherins, especially the purebloods like Draco and Blaise and Theo and Pansy and Millicent—has gone away a little between the tutoring and his new friendship with Hermione, who seems to know everything about everything. Harry’s pretty sure she even knows more than Draco, except for about pureblood stuff, which Draco knows more than anyone about. The detentions are miserable—mashing up the most disgusting ingredients Snape seems to be able to find—but at least Snape isn’t any worse to him in class, and he hasn’t started going after Draco in class, either.

But because of Quidditch, Draco has even gotten off his back a little bit about learning about pureblood stuff, which is good, because they’ve been running practice almost every night and also some mornings and he just doesn’t have time.

He’s become friends with Hermione, too, which Ron is okay with but Draco isn’t so happy with because she’s a muggleborn and he doesn’t like muggleborns. But taking down a mountain troll together makes it hard not to be friends or at least to like each other, so Draco has kind of left it alone.

It’s nice, though, because she gives him a copy of _Quidditch through the Ages_ and the day before the first match she lights a fire in a jar to keep them warm as they huddle together outside in the courtyard between classes. They must look guilty, though, when Snape walks by, because he limps over to them, glaring at him. Draco isn’t there—he can’t be seen in public talking to Hermione, or something, Harry isn’t sure—so now Snape only has people he hates.

“What’s that you’ve got there, Potter?”

Harry shows the book, shifting a little more to block the jar from view, and Snape’s mouth lifts in a sneer. “Library books are not to be taken outside the school. Give it to me. And the only reason you are not receiving a detention is so I will not be forced to spend even more time suffering through your presence.”

Harry glares at him as he limps away with the book Harry is definitely allowed to have. “He just made that up.”

Hermione opens her mouth, maybe to argue, then closes it when Ron says bitterly, “Yeah. I hope whatever’s wrong with his leg hurts. Git.”

\--

“He’s probably brought it back to the library by now.”

Harry scowls at Theo, even though he knows he’s right, then goes back to playing with the edge of his Charms homework, curling it up and then straightening it out, over and over again. He wants the book back so he has something to distract him from the next day, and it’s not like Snape should have taken it away from him.

He curls the edge again, then freezes when Draco’s hand closes around his. “Will you stop _fidgeting_?”

Harry scowls at him, too, even though it’s not his fault. “I want the book back.”

“You can get it back tomorrow.”

Harry isn’t going to be able to sit still anyway, so he pulls away from Draco and jerks off the bed where he and Draco and Theo have been—more or less—working on their Charms homework. Theo did his already—he really likes Charms, and Harry kind of likes it too but he hasn’t been able to concentrate all night. “I’m going to go get it.”

“Harry—”

“I’ll be back soon.”

Draco grabs his arm, and Harry actually restrains himself from flinching, which is a success in his head. “Harry. I’ll get the book back.” Draco grins. “He likes me more.”

Well, that at least is true. Harry smiles at him. “Thanks.”

Draco nods, then hurries off. Harry sits back down and looks at his Charms paper, which lasts all of five seconds before he goes back to fiddling with it.

Theo rolls his eyes. “You really need to stop fidgeting. I don’t know what you’ve done to piss Snape off so much, but rumor has it he’s friends with the Malfoys, or at least acquainted with them. He likes Draco. And anyway, if you weren’t here, Draco would be top of the House, at least for the year.”

Harry’s not really sure what that means, but he always feels stupid when he has to ask about stuff like that, so he doesn’t ask. Maybe he’ll ask Prefect Caster later. She’ll probably tell him.

Draco bursts back into the room, eyes wide and a little bit scared, and then he shakes his head and looks at Harry and says, “I couldn’t get it. He’s not—I couldn’t get it.”

Harry lets out a huff and flops back down on his bed. “Well, thanks for trying.” Now he’s never going to be able to distract himself.

\--

He wakes up the next morning feeling ill and sits at the Syltherin table at the Great Hall poking a piece of toast around his plate while Crabbe and Goyle sit on either side of him eating truly nauseating amounts of sausage.

Draco flounces down at some point, pushing Goyle out of the way just enough for him to squeeze him between him and Harry, moving Crabbe and Goyle about as far away from each other as they ever get. Harry’s pretty sure they even go to the loo at the same time.

He tries not to think about it too hard.

Draco nudges his shoulder. “If you don’t eat you’re going to pass out and fall off your broom and make a fool of yourself in front of the entire school.”

Harry bites off a laugh that sounds a little too hysterical for his tastes, then reaches over and starts gulping water because he knows sometimes it makes him feel a little less sick when he hasn’t eaten in a long time. “I don’t want to eat anything.”

Draco stares at him like he’s nuts, then plucks the piece of toast from Harry’s plate and shoves it into his mouth so he has to either take a bite or choke.

Around a mouthful of toast, he asks, “What the hell?”

Draco smirks at him. “I can’t let you make a fool of our House, can I?”

Harry swallows, then scowls at him. “Don’t be a prat.”

“I’m being responsible,” Draco says loftily.

A hand claps on Harry’s back, and he jumps, spinning around on the bench and almost colliding with Crabbe, who doesn’t seem to have noticed. Higgs is standing behind him, grinning a little. “You ready, Potter?”

Harry swallows again, this time mostly to wet his throat so he can actually get words out. “Y-yeah.”

Higgs snorts. “Yeah, you look it. Come on, team sits together before games. You eaten anything?”

Harry shakes his head, then shrugs. “Toast.”

“Right.” Higgs waits for Harry to clamber off of the bench before nudging him towards the end of the table where Flint and the rest of the team are sitting. “You think you’re going to throw up?”

Harry shakes his head again. “No. Only throw up if it hurts too much.” Higgs gives him a weird look that makes him think he said too much, so he shrugs again. “I won’t throw up.”

“If you say so.” Higgs pushes Harry down next in an empty spot next to Flint, then sits down on the other side of him. “Eat something, Potter, or I’ll do what Malfoy did and start shoving it in your mouth.”

They all snicker around him, and then Pucey grabs a piece of bacon and sticks it in Flint’s mouth; Flint shoves at him but eats the bacon anyway, and the group of them devolve into what Harry’s pretty sure is friendly comradery. He’s pretty sure this is what it feels like to be part of a team.

He manages to get down an egg and some beans while he watches them bicker and tease each other.

Of course, his nerves come back as soon as they get to the changing room and he ducks off to one corner of the room to change like he always does because they all think he’s too skinny and Higgs has taken to checking him for bruises because he seems to think Harry’s going to get really hurt and not tell anyone. Which is stupid. It’s just that bruises aren’t that bad, and yeah, his arm was pretty bad, but it wasn’t _that bad_ , and they’re all just being stupid.

But even though he’s shaking a little he can’t stop grinning because he might not catch the snitch but he knows he’s good at flying, and he’s never competed in team sports before other than in P.E. where he was always picked last because he’s small and skinny and Dudley would beat up anyone who wanted him on their team.

But they want him on their team.

Once everyone’s dressed and has their brooms, they all gather around Flint, who levels a steely look at all of them before saying, “First game of the season, and we’re against the Gryffindors. Losing isn’t an option. Their seeker’s new and we don’t know how they play, so keep them off their game and their beaters away from Potter. And remember—it only counts as cheating if you’re caught.”

And then, with a grunt, he’s off.

Harry turns to Higgs, who’s fiddling with a glove. “Was that it?”

Higgs laughs. “That’s more than he usually says.”

Harry fidgets. “What if I don’t want to cheat?”

“Nobody cares, as long as we win. You catch the snitch the way you’ve been catching in practice, we’re all good.” He ruffles Harry’s hair. “You’ll do good. Come on.”

They get out there and take to the air, and someone is commentating, some Gryffindor—Harry has some association between the voice and a spider, but he’s not really sure why—but Harry tunes it out, keeping all of his focus on watching for the snitch to be released.

The Gryffindor seeker is a girl named Eloise Midgen; she doesn’t look that much older than him but she must be at least a second year. Either way, he doesn’t know her. She’s watching him, though, so he waves, and she ducks her head but then goes back to watching her. From the way that Higgs flew sometimes when he practiced with Harry, he has a feeling she’s going to watch to see if he sees the snitch before her. Which is stupid, because her eyes are probably better than his, and if she actually looked, she would probably see the snitch first, but she’s not going to so he doesn’t watch her.

Instead he stares at Hooch as she talks to the two captains, Flint and an older student who Harry only recognizes because he saw him talking to Fred and George at some point, and she lets out the quaffle and then the bludgers and then, a tiny speck in the distance, the snitch.

It’s gone almost immediately, disappearing into the tangle of people flying around, and he focused his vision on red hair. It makes the Weasley twins easy to spot even from far away, so he can keep track of where they are. He’s been hit with bludgers before, a lot, in practice, and it hurts. He’d rather avoid that. It takes a lot of bruise paste to make those bruises go away.

Bruise paste is the best thing the wizarding world has. Harry’s definitely going to get a tub of it before he goes home. They don’t hit him that much, but it happens sometimes, and Dudley goes after him a lot with Piers, and it’ll probably help when he gets his hands stomped on or things like that.

But he can’t think about now because he needs to pay attention to what’s going on. He’s high up enough to be mostly out of the way, but it also means he needs to try even harder to find the snitch.

Sometimes he uses the trick of finding a glint or reflection, but one of the Gryffindor girls has something shiny in her hair that keeps reflecting and distracting him.

He thinks he spots it at one point, and he dives, but it flits away before he can get to it, into the scrum of people, and he’s not going to fly into the middle of that because he’ll just get away, so he works back towards the periphery.

He tunes out most of the announcements other than the score, doing the math that Higgs had him practice to make sure they don’t end up more than 150 behind. But they’re doing well, so he doesn’t pay that much attention, focusing more on the Weasley twins than anything else.

At some point one of them heads towards him, hitting the bludger at him. He ducks, and the Weasley flies past him, getting so close he reaches out and ruffles Harry’s hair. Harry jerks out of the way, and the Weasley laughs at him.

Harry turns so he can keep an eye on him, also looking for the snitch, and after a second later he sees it, glittering in the distance, and he shifts to dive—

But his broom doesn’t follow, jerking instead, almost pitching him off entirely, and he clings on as it pitches and rolls and almost flips him upside-down, and he has no idea what’s going on but he’s fifty feet up, sixty, and falling will kill him and he just needs to hang on.

The whole world is shaking around him as he clings on, as the broom bucks, and then pain slams into his shoulder and he almost flies off, hands scrabbling at the end of the broom handle. He thinks he screams, but he can’t hear it over the rushing in his ears.

His entire world narrows into staying on the broom, so much so that he almost doesn’t notice when the jerking stop and the most prevalent in his vision is—

The snitch, fluttering and twitching like it’s taunting him. He grabs at it with the arm that’s screaming in pain, which is apparently a bad idea, because it’s slow and clumsy and the snitch darts away. He’s not really thinking about anything else, not really, he just wants to catch the snitch, but it keeps darting just out of reach as he grabs at it.

And then it jerks past his hand in front of his face, and in a desperate move he opens his mouth and bites at it. To his astonishment, it ends up in his mouth, and he closes his teeth around it, closing his hand over his mouth as he pulls up way closer to the ground than he thought he was, tumbling off of his broom and ending up sprawled on the ground.

For a moment, the breath knocked out of him, all he can feel is pain. And then there’s a fluttering in his mouth, and he opens his mouth to spit out the snitch into his mouth.

Madam Hooch lands next to him a second later, while he’s working his jaw and trying to figure out what is impact-pain and what is injury-pain. She crouches down next to him. “Are you okay, Mr. Potter?”

He holds out the snitch to her and is gratified to see her look surprised. “I caught it.” His voice sounds a little weird, like his jaw isn’t really moving properly. It’s not broken or anything, but snitches are a little too big for mouths, and also he’s in pain and things suck.

She blows her whistle, the sound shrill, and then a second later Flint lands next to him, followed quickly by Higgs. Behind them are the Weasley twins, who are blocked from getting close to him by the Slytherin beaters.

Flint leans over him. “Nice catch, Potter. Anything broken?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t think so.” He tries to move his shoulder, which hurts a lot more than the rest of him. He doesn’t scream, but it’s only because he sinks his teeth into his hand. “Shoulder, maybe.”

Hooch points her wand at his shoulder and says something, and his shoulder glows blue. “It’s dislocated. Let’s get you to Madam Pomfrey.”

Harry shrugs his okay shoulder. “Or you could pop it back in. I’d do it, but I can’t reach.” He did that once after Dudley shoved him out of a tree—back before Dudley was too fat to get up in trees—and he had to brace himself against the tree to do it. But there aren’t any trees around.

Higgs sends him one of those looks at makes him think he said something he wasn’t supposed to say, and one of the Weasley twins finally breaks through to hurry over and say, “I’m really sorry.”

Flint blocks him from getting any closer, saying in his meanest pretending-to-be-a-troll voice, “Out of here, Gryffindor.”

The twin—George, he thinks—shoots Harry a pleading look from past Flint. “I hit it before we knew there was something wrong with your broom. “

Harry’s not really upset with George, because he was just doing his job and it’s not George’s fault that there was something wrong with his broom—though he doesn’t know what it was, and he wants to ask one of them what could have happened because he doesn’t know enough about brooms—so he just shrugs his good shoulder. “It’s okay.”

Flint shoves him away then turns back to Harry. “Pomfrey or Snape, it’s your choice.”

Hooch shoots him an irritated look. “He’s going to Madam Pomfrey. In fact—” She waves her wand, and Harry lifts up into the air; he flails, freaking out, until another wave of her wand immobilizes him, which is even scarier because he can’t move, he can’t move at all, and he starts panicking, breathing coming faster.

Higgs steps up next to him, grabbing his good shoulder. “Potter. Calm down.”

“Let me go.” He sucks in a breath. “Let me down. Just pop it back in.” It’s not that big a deal, or at least he doesn’t think it is, and magic people seem to have weird views on medicine but popping his shoulder back in shouldn’t be that hard.

“Breathe, Potter. You—”

“What seems to be the problem here?”

Harry jerks his head—the only part of his body he can move—to the side to look at Snape, who’s striding towards them, robes billowing behind him. He thinks the robes are singed, but he doesn’t know why. “I didn’t do anything.”

Madam Hooch makes an irritated noise. “I want to get him to Madam Pomfrey, which would be easier if your students would allow me to take him there.”

Snape looks at Flint. “What happened?”

“Dislocated shoulder from the bludger.”

“He started hyperventilating when Madam Hooch immobilized him,” Higgs adds, and they all look back at Harry, who’s still breathing too fast, and he wants to fight back but he’s just lying there, unable to move, and he wants them to let him go.

“Can you just put it back?” It’s throbbing now that the initial other pain has gone away a little, and he’d even be willing to have Professor Snape do it if it would just get it over with.

Professor Snape gives him a weird look, then says, “Mr. Potter, are you asking me to put your shoulder back in place rather than taking you to Madam Pomfrey who can do so with significantly less pain?”

Harry nods. “Please.”

Professor Snape stares at him for another second before turning to Madam Hooch. “Rolanda, free his dislocated shoulder.”

Madam Hooch nods and waves her wand, and his shoulder drops a little bit, though it seems to be resting on the same invisible air that the rest of him is. Professor Snape steps up next to him, grabs his arm, braces—

And Harry loses himself in the pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's ignore the lack of best practices and also how long it took me to post this.
> 
> I may or may not have gotten all of the dislocated shoulder details right, and also seek a medical professional if you can if you have a dislocated shoulder. (As an excuse, as will be talked about in like three books, this!Snape is a trained mediwizard because I figure Potions masters should have training because Potions is all about the body and also they could poison themselves super easily.)


	11. Chapter 11

“—easier if you had allowed me to _treat_ my patient before you shoved his arm back in like some kind of _muggle_.”

“He was asking me to—”

\--

“Did you see his face, Professor? He wasn’t afraid of you fixing his arm like that.”

“He’s eleven, Mr. Higgs. I doubt he knew what he was asking.”

“He ignores bruises, too—”

“I know that you are sensitive to this, Mr. Higgs, but this is Mr. Potter we are speaking of. Do not try to apply your experiences to his life. He is impetuous and reckless, just like his father. This was his way of showing off.”

“Okay, Professor.”

“Now I know you have a Potions paper to complete.”

\--

Harry wakes up to Draco tapping on Harry’s leg and humming under his breath, something tuneless and light. It takes Harry a second of squinting at the unfamiliar light above him, but then he remembers the bludger and the broom and decides he’s probably in the infirmary.

“You been there long?”

Draco jerks and stops tapping and humming. “You’re awake. How do you feel? Are you okay? Is your shoulder okay?”

Harry reaches over the poke at it, and it only aches a little. “It’s fine. Did we win?”

“You caught the snitch,” Draco says. “Of course we won.”

He looks like he wants to say more, but Madam Pomfrey bustles over, looking fretful in a way that the school nurse never looked when they did eye exams or when Harry had to help one of his classmates to the school infirmary after he threw up during P.E..

She stops in front of Harry, hands planted on her hips. “I see you’re awake, Mr. Potter. How are you feeling?”

Harry shrugs, which hurts the screwed up shoulder. “I’m fine. It hurts less than I thought it would.” He’s surprised it doesn’t feel like he has bruises everywhere, given how hard he hit the ground.

“It would hurt even less if Professor Snape hadn’t done that barbaric technique.” She pulls out her wand, pointing it at him. She mutters something, and a pale blue light blooms out from his shoulder. He can’t tell what it’s for, but it seems to mean something to her because after a second she nods decisively and puts her wand away. “It’s properly healed, at least, no thanks to—I want you to keep weight off of the shoulder for at least a week, and if you feel any sharp pain or if the ache does not go away within the week, come back. Do you understand me, Mr. Potter?” Harry nods. “I don’t want to see any foolishness or you overdoing it. And no Quidditch for a week, either.”

Harry gapes at her. “No Quidditch?”

“Correct. I have informed your captain, so he will have no reason to expect you to play during practice for the next week. I do not want to see you back in here anytime soon. You may go.”

Harry scrambles out of the bed. “Thank you, Madam Pomfrey.”

She smiles at him a little, her expression softening. “Off with you, Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy.”

They head out of the infirmary, Harry rolling his shoulder to try to figure out where the pain is. It’s not that bad, especially compared to the last time, and he’s definitely going to need to get some of whatever bruise potion they used to make him feel so not-awful.

They’re a little bit down the hallway when the sound of running heads towards them, and Harry spins because people running at him tends to end badly. Fred and George are heading down the hallway towards him, panting a little as they stop in front of them. Draco shoves in front of him so he’s between them, demanding, “What do you want, Weasleys?”

“We wanted to apologize.” George looks at Harry. “I said sorry before, but you seemed kind of out of it so, uh, sorry that I dislocated your shoulder. I didn’t realize there was something wrong with your broom until I hit it.”

“He doesn’t need your apologies,” Draco starts to say, but Harry rolls his eyes, pushing past him.

“Thanks,” he tells them, ignoring Draco’s squawk of irritation. “It’s fine, it’s not your fault.” He fidgets with a part of his robe, crumpled from where he slept on it. “Do you know what happened with my broom? Did anyone say?”

Fred and George exchange looks, and then Fred says, “We’re not really sure, but it stopped when, uh—when Hermione Granger set Snape’s robes on fire.”

Harry sucks in a breath, but immediately Draco says, “No. Snape wouldn’t go after Harry. He’s our Head of House, and a Professor. Why would he try to make Harry lose?”

“We don’t think he was trying to make Harry lose,” Fred says.

“We think he was trying to kill him.”

“No,” Draco snaps. “He wouldn’t. Harry’s a Slytherin.”

“He does hate me.”

Draco whirls on him. “He doesn’t hate you. We’ve been over this.”

“Yes, and we decided that he doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t dislike you enough to try to _kill_ you.”

Harry throws up his arms. “Voldemort tried to kill me and he didn’t even _know_ me. Maybe that’s just how I am.”

All three of them flinch at Voldemort’s name, and Draco looks horrified. “Professor Snape isn’t like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,” he whispers. “He wouldn’t try to kill you. He’s not like that.”

“Draco—”

Draco spins to glare at the Weasley twins. “He’s not like that.” And then he turns and stomps off.

Harry watches him go, knowing Draco well enough to know that talking to him right now won’t do any good, then looks at the Weasley twins. “Sorry about him. And thanks for apologizing.”

George grins at him. “Wouldn’t want the whole world to turn against us for hurting The Boy Who Lived.”

Harry scowls at him. “How are you two not in Slytherin?”

They both put hands to their chests, adopting wounded expressions. “What in insult,” Fred says.

“But if you want a reason,” George tells him.

“Then consider this.”

“What’s the most Slytherin thing you can do?”

“Convincing the Sorting Hat not to make you Slytherin.”

Harry laughs. “What if you had ended up in different Houses?”

“I threatened to set the Hat on fire if it separated us,” George says unashamedly. “When it told me that wasn’t possible, I told it I would find out where it was kept and bother it every day for the entire time I was here.”

“And that convinced it?”

“I think it decided if I was brave enough to threaten a magical object that old, I could go into Gryffindor.”

Harry really adores the two of them, and he has the sudden glorious image of Snape trying to handle both of them in Slytherin. Or, maybe even better, him trying to handle one of them.

“Anyway,” George says, walking over to ruffle Harry’s hair. Harry half-heartedly swats him away, but he really likes it. This is what it feels like to have an older brother, he thinks. “We’re off to go see if we can convince Peeves to help us break into Snape’s quarters and replace his shampoo with hair dye.”

“If he uses shampoo,” Fred puts in. “The greasy git.”

Watching them walk away, Harry wouldn’t be surprised to see Snape with red and gold hair the next morning.

\--

Harry can’t sleep that night, with Draco sullenly going to bed early so Harry doesn’t even have him to talk to, and he really wants to talk to Hermione and find out what happened, so at the middle of the night he shoves his shoes on and pads out of the room.

A seventh year is sleeping on one of the couches, book open on their stomach, and Harry is glad living with the Dursleys taught him how to step lightly so he doesn’t wake them up.

The whole castle is quiet once he gets out of Slytherin, and he keeps quiet and sticks near walls so his shadows won’t go too far. It’s pretty far to the Gryffindor Tower, but he doesn’t mind.

There’s a portrait in front of it, a fat lady who’s sleeping in her frame, snoring loudly. She snaps awake when he walks up. “You,” she says, too loudly for his peace of mind. He looks around but nobody is around. “Who are you? You’re not one of mine. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I, uh—I need to talk to Hermione. Granger. Hermione Granger. She’s a Gryffindor.”

The lady glares at him. “It’s the middle of the night, young man. You shouldn’t be calling upon your girlfriend this late.”

Heat rises in his face. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my friend. And I need to talk to her.”

“Not now, young man. And it’s after curfew, so you should go back to wherever you should be. Now go.”

Harry hesitates, debating whether he can start guessing passwords until she lets him in, but then he hears footsteps—footsteps he recognize because they’re from Professor Snape’s distinctive clicking-snap walk—and he bolts away, pelting down the hallway. He can’t be caught out after curfew by Professor Snape, not again, especially because he’s still not done with his detentions from Halloween and he really doesn’t want to have to scrub even more cauldrons.

Snape even makes him and Draco serve on different days so they can’t make faces at each other during the detention.

He’s not really sure where he ends up, but he can still hear Professor Snape behind him, so he points his wand at the nearest door and snaps, “ _Alohamora_.” The door unlocks with a clunk, and he pulls it open and slips in, closing it as quietly as he can. His heartbeat is pounding in his ears.

One of the older Slytherins had taught them all that spell along with the _Tempus_ charm and the warming charm. He hadn’t really thought about how it would be useful, but now he’s glad to know it.

For a moment he keeps his forehead pressed against the cool wood of the door, trying to keep his breathing under control, until he realizes that the snuffling-panting noise isn’t actually coming from him, not entirely. There’s something else in there.

Spinning slowly, Harry turns to see the biggest dog he’s ever seen, or three dogs, three dog heads, and he’s not really sure what’s going on but the heads are close, breathing hot acrid air into his face, growling softly between the snuffling.

Harry flashes to Aunt Marge’s dogs chasing him up a tree, and him being stuck up that tree, shaking in fear, not sure how he’s going to get down.

But there’s nobody egging this dog on, and Snape might be right outside the door, so Harry keeps his back pressed against the door. He reaches up, keeping his movements slow, to pet one of the dogs on his head. “Good, doggy.” The dog growls louder but doesn’t snap at Harry’s hand, so he keeps scratching behind the dog’s ear. The head is so big that to be low enough it has to be right against Harry’s chest, almost, but he makes sure not to get too scared because dogs can smell fear.

And besides, Snape is scarier. People usually are.

So he keeps scratching. “You’re a good doggy, aren’t you? I wonder why they’re keeping you in here instead of letting you go outside. I hope they let you go for walks. Maybe that’s why you’re so growly, because you don’t get to go outside. I’d be sad if I was locked inside all the time, too.” A blob of drool drips on his shoe, and then the head he’s petting is shoved out of the way by another head, and he starts petting that one, too. “I can’t tell if you’re one dog or three. I guess magic people could have three-headed dogs. I should be afraid of you, I feel like, I think, but I’m really tired of being scared of things, and I almost died earlier today, and I feel like if anything’s going to kill me it’s going to be a person and not a dog.”

The farthest-away head growls a bit like it knows what he’s saying. “Not that you’re not scary,” he tells it. “You are scary. Very scary. But most of the time when animals do bad things it’s because people make them do it. Or I guess if they can’t help it. But you haven’t bitten me yet, so you probably won’t bite me now.”

The head he had pet first nudges the side of his head, snuffling against him with burning-hot breath. Harry smiles. “I should probably go back to my dorm, I guess, so I can sleep. Hopefully Snape isn’t waiting for me outside, because he’ll be mad at me and I’ll get in trouble. But I can’t really stay in here with you all night, so I should go. I’d come back and visit you, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.” He has the funny feeling he’s in the forbidden area of the school.

Reaching behind him, he pulls open the door, walking forward a little so he can get the door open. The dog’s heads moves with a little grumbling, and before Harry heads out of the room he scratches behind the ear of the last head, too, just so it doesn’t feel left out.

\--

It’s not until he’s back in his bed pulling off drool-soaked shoes that he realizes just how absurd what just happened was, and what a bad idea it was. He could have gotten in so much trouble. He could have gotten hurt.

But he didn’t, and he figures that’s the way it is for Slytherins. It doesn’t matter if you do something stupid as long as you don’t get caught doing it or as long as it’s successful. Like what Flint said about cheating. It doesn’t count as long as you don’t get caught.

So what he did is fine, because nobody knows he did it.

Now he just needs to decide if he should tell Draco.


	12. Chapter 12

Draco has lost his mind.

Not about the dog, because Harry didn’t tell him about the dog because he would be upset that Harry left him out, and not about the possibility of Snape having tried to kill him because he just refuses to accept that that’s a possibility. No, he’s lost his mind over making sure Harry knows everything there is to know about wizarding culture.

He threatened to sit on Harry until Harry learned the genealogies of all of the main pureblood families back fifteen generations. Harry didn’t believe him.

Draco is now sitting on Harry.

“Do I really need to know all seven of Mrs. Zabini’s husbands?”

Draco nudges Harry’s thigh from where he’s sitting on it. “Yes. It may be important someday.”

“You can ignore number four,” Blaise tells him. “He only lasted three weeks before falling down the stairs.”

Harry twists so he can blink at him. It’s a remarkably blasé way of talking about his step-father dying. Though, honestly, Harry can’t imagine being too sad if Uncle Vernon fell down the stairs. “Which one was number four?”

“Piero. Fucking blood traitor he was.”

Okay, Harry will keep that in mind. “If you don’t like blood traitors, does it bother you that I’m halfblood?”

Blaise opens his eyes from where he’s lying on his bed to look at Harry. “What if it does?”

Harry shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Blaise snorts. “Yeah, I don’t care. You’re Harry bloody Potter. You could be half-dragon and nobody would care.”

“But you—”

“Get off it, Potter, I don’t care. Doesn’t mean I’m going to think well of muggleborns or blood traitors, but Slytherin is Slytherin, and you’re you, and I’m bored with this conversation so go back to work.”

Harry twists back around in his seat to go back to looking at the Zabini family tree. “Well if I need to know all seven husbands do I need to know their whole family tree?”

Draco gives him an irritated look, then sighs dramatically and plucks the family tree from his lap to examine it. After a moment, he sighs again, tapping his wand on three of the names and muttering something to turn them gold. “Learn these three—they’re English and important.”

“If you’re including three,” Blaise puts in, “he was Welsh.”

“Fine,” Draco huffs. “They’re _British_. Either stop interrupting me or help.”

“Well if you’re going to teach Potter the wrong information you might as well not teach him anything at all.”

Draco lets out a strangled noise of frustration, and Harry hears Nott snicker from his bed. He hides his own smile behind a hand, and Draco glares at him.

“Well, fine, if you’re just going to mock my efforts, you can learn all of this on your own.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Are you giving up already?”

“Hardly.” Draco seems to know he’s being manipulated but can’t help going along with it. There’s a moment of distraction as a upper-year boy with his book buried in a nose walks into their dorm, looks around like he has no idea where he is, and walks out. “Very well.” He grabs another piece of parchment and shoves it at Harry. “The Shafiq family.”

Harry examines it, finger trailing down the generations, then stops when he it’s a couple generations back. “These are both men.”

Draco glances at it cursorily before going back to his reading. “Yes.”

“Men can’t—men can’t be with other men. Men can’t marry other men.”

“What daft nonsense are you going on about?”

“Men can’t marry. How are these—Ashraf and Farhan—how are they married? How do they have a child? If this is all about blood, they can’t have adopted someone, not that men can adopt someone together anyway.”

Draco is gaping at him. He’s pretty sure he’s gaping at Draco, too, because none of this makes sense. Finally, over to their right, Theo sighs. “Muggles don’t let men marry men or women marry women.”

Draco’s expression twists. “That’s barbaric.”

Harry squirms uncomfortably. It’s not like he’s ever really thought about it before, men being able to marry men; it’s just always been something he knew didn’t happen. And Uncle Vernon makes comments about nancy boys, but Harry knows what it’s like to be different and so he never really cared that much. What did it matter if someone wanted to kiss a boy or a girl? All of it sounds gross to him, all wet and slimy with tongues and too much touching.

To distract from his discomfort, he asks, “But really, how did they have a kid?”

“For pureblood families, if it’s two men they find a pureblood woman, usually who who doesn’t have any other prospects, and they bring her into the family. One of the men has sex with her or they use a potion and—well, and then she bears the child and is counted as part of the family. She’s not blood so her rank is below the youngest in that generation that she enters into and she can’t inherit, but they protect her.” He taps the line between the two names with his wand, and a third name stems out from it—Badriya. “If it’s two women sometimes they do the same, or otherwise the man has their own family. But the child would take the mother’s name, either way.”

“Does the third person help raise the child?”

Draco shrugs. “I don’t know, if they want, I guess. You could ask Millicent—she has two fathers.”

Harry resolves himself to do that. But also, he can’t help imagining, what if he had had that? What if there had been three parents instead of two, and then he wouldn’t have been stuck with the Dursleys? Unless the third parents had also lived with them, and then all three of his parents would have died. He supposes that’s not really better.

“Anyway,” Draco says, tapping on the sheet again. “Back to work.”

\--

Harry flops down in one of the common room chairs, rubbing his shoulder a little. He made the mistake of running into a wall earlier, distracted by Draco giving detailed instructions to Crabbe and Goyle on how close they’re supposed to walk behind him, and it’s aching now. He’s not quite at the week mark that Madam Pomfrey ordered, and it doesn’t really hurt most of the time, but walking into that wall hurt more than usual.

Draco is heading to the library to find some book about Potions that Professor Snape mentioned during class, but that sounds boring to Harry and also won’t help his grade—which is getting a lot better thanks to his tutoring—so Harry headed back to Slytherin.

He’s just about to pull out his History of Magic textbook to see if he can make any headway on it—seeing as he has yet to manage to stay awake through an entire class and so has no idea what’s going on—when a girl heads down from the girls dorms and sits down on one of the couches, face buried in a book.

Harry stares at her for a second because she looks _so familiar_ , and then he gets it. “Do you have a brother in Slytherin?”

The girl looks up at him, a little startled, and he has a feeling she didn’t know he was there. “What?”

“Someone who looked like you wandered into our dorm last night.” She still looks a little freaked out, so he says, “I’m not—I was just wondering. I don’t know a lot of the upper-year Slytherins.”

“I—” She looks like she decides something, because she says, “That was me.”

Harry stares at her. “What do you mean?”

She shrugs, looking a little uncomfortable. “Sometimes I’m a girl. Sometimes I’m a boy.”

“How does that work?”

Her face twists. “What do you mean?”

“Does the castle know when you’re a girl and when you’re a boy? Do you have two beds and two sets of stuff? Does your stuff teleport? Do the walls change?” Harry knows only boys are allowed on the boys’ side and only girls are allowed on the girls’ side, except for probably teachers and maybe prefects, but he’s pretty sure even prefects have to stick to their sides. He didn’t know that people could be both, but maybe that’s a magic thing, like how Draco talked about Dragon Pox and how the boils had fire or something like that.

For the first time, she gets close to smiling. “The castle does know, and all of my stuff appears on whatever side I go to on that day.” She shrugs. “I’m not really sure what it looks like when it changes, because I can’t go on that side then.”

That’s so cool. “Does your body change, too? Like when you’re a girl do you have a girl’s body and when you’re a guy do you have a guy’s body?” That seems like a thing that magic should be able to do.

She shakes her head. “If you’re a metamorphmagus, you could, I guess, but otherwise there are potions that can do that, but before you’re of age your parents—or guardians—need to approve it.” She shrugs. “And mine don’t. Bloody fucking pureblood assholes.”

Harry knows what that feels like. Not the pureblood part, but he can imagine if he was like that the Dursleys wouldn’t approve it. They would fight it as hard as they could just to stop something he didn’t like from happening. “Sorry.”

She shrugs. “It happens, and at least I’ll be able to afford it once I’m of age. I’m Max, by the way.”

“Are you always Max, or—”

“I’m always Max.”

Harry waves at her. “I’m Harry. Though you probably, um—”

“Yeah.” Max smiles.

Harry fiddles with his bag for a second, then asks, “Is there a way to tell? I mean, if you’re a boy or a girl? Not that I—I mean, it doesn’t really matter, I guess, because girls are cool too, or at least Hermione is, my friend Hermione, she’s really smart, but I’d feel bad if I think you’re a guy when you’re being a girl or if I think you’re a girl when you’re being a guy. Because I wouldn’t want someone to think I’m a girl when I’m, you know…” He shrugs. “Not.”

Max stares at him for a long time, and then she says, “Not always, but sometimes I wear makeup when I’m a girl.” She points to her face. “See how my eyelashes are long and black. I’m wearing mascara. Sometimes I wear lipstick.” She shows him her shoes, which are heels, though they’re prettier than Aunt Petunia’s. “Sometimes I don’t, though. I don’t know. I guess you could ask me. It’s not like I see you much.”

“True.” Harry fiddles with his bag strap again, then hops to his feet. “It was nice to meet you. I’ll, uh, leave you to your reading now.”

Max nods, picking up her book again, and Harry hurries away.

\--

He finds Prefect Caster in the section where she sits in the library, writing furiously, and he stands across the table from her until she looks up at him. “Yeah, snakelet?”

In a rush, Harry says, “IknowwhatIcareaboutandwanttochange.”

She blinks at him. “Again, snakelet, and this time make them actual words.”

Harry feels his face heat up, and he ducks it, hair falling in front of his eyes. “I know what I care about and want to change.”

Her eyebrows go up, and she gathers her books up, saying, “That’s interesting. Let’s go talk about this somewhere Madam Prince won’t kill us.”

They head out of the library, and Harry spots Draco but he’s busy pouring over a book which is probably good because Harry hasn’t told him about the whole working with Prefect Caster thing. Prefect Caster leads him to one of the unused classrooms near the library, where she sits down and gestures for him to sit across from her. He does.

“So, what do you want to work on?”

“Did you know that there are some people who are sometimes a girl and sometimes a guy? And that there’s a potion to make it so their body changes but they’re not allowed to use it if their parents won’t let them?”

Something shifts in her face, softens a little. “So you met Max.”

“What if they have bad parents? What if they have bad parents who don’t want to let them do it because they think it’s bad or stupid or because they want to hurt them? They shouldn’t have to have their parents’ permission.”

Prefect Caster stares at a long time, but Harry isn’t going to look away, not this time, and eventually she smiles. “Why do you care about this?”

Harry doesn’t get the question. “What do you mean? I—you just said, you know I met Max. I like Max. She—he—they seem nice. And that’s stupid, that they can’t do what they want with their body.”

“Do you know who Max is?”

Harry hates when this happens, like when it happens with Draco or Blaise or some of the other Slytherins, when they’re saying something and he’s saying something and it feels like they’re having totally different conversations. “A Slytherin? She said her parents were pureblood, but a lot of Slytherins are.”

“Max Shafiq, last of the Shafiqs, heir to the biggest warding firm in the magical world. Once her parents die, she’ll be one of the wealthier purebloods in England, along with one of the best-trained warders. A good person to be friends with.”

“Oh.” That all sounds very complicated, and Harry only actually understood part of it. “I don’t know. I only met them today. But the whole thing, the whole potions thing, and needing permission, that’s what I want to fix. First. That’s the first thing I want to fix. If I can. With you.”

“Okay.” Prefect Caster smiles at him. “Okay. We can work on that.”

Harry smiles back, then thinks of something else that he’s been meaning to ask someone and hasn’t gotten a chance to yet. “Also, can you explain something about Slytherin to me?”

“Course, snakelet. That’s my job.”

Harry hesitates, then asks in a rush, “Draco was talking about hierarchies and I don’t know what he meant and I was wondering what he meant when he was talking about hierarchies.”

Prefect Caster stares at him for so long that he feels his face burning again, and he looks down, staring at a scratch in the table in front of him. Then he laughs, and his whole body burns with humiliation. He didn’t think she of all people would laugh at him for not knowing something. Then she says, “Right, I didn’t think of that. Nobody would have told you. Usually the people at the top are pureblood and were raised Slytherin so they know already, and everyone else is told because they need to learn their place.” She smiles an odd little smile. “You may have noticed, the people in Slytherin like to know wehre they stand. They like the idea of a hierarchy, of knowing their place.”

Harry hadn’t really noticed that, but he also doesn’t really pay attention to that sort of stuff so he just shrugs.

“The hierarchy system is broken up roughly by year, with a few exceptions. Prefects, mainly. A fifth year prefect is technically higher up in the hierarchy than a seventh year non-prefect with, again, some exceptions. None of these are hard and fast rules, but generally things work the same way every year. Purebloods are on top. There’s a bid of a dominance game between them, deciding who ranks higher based on money, power, influence, magical talent. If you’re not a pureblood, generally you don’t question it. You just know who trumps who.”

Harry nods. That makes sense, in a weird Slytherin sort of way. “So Draco’s on top, then, I guess. His father seems to have all sorts of connections to the Minister, and they have a lot of money.”

She laughs again. “I told you there are exceptions, snakelet.”

Harry fows. “What do you mean?”

“Normally you’d be right. Malfoy would be top of your year, the biggest of the smallest fish. But your year has you.”

He looks at her. “What do I have to do with anything?”

“You’re Harry Potter. If you decided to use an ounce of your power, you’d be at the top of the entire House. Now, some people might not listen to you because you’re eleven, but broadly, you would trump the hierarchy.”

“So—so when Draco—Draco mentioned being—I don’t remember how he put it—trumped in the hierarchy or outweighed or something—”

“Were you suggesting that he do something?”

Harry shrugs. “Not intentionally, exactly, I wasn’t really thinking of it that way.”

“Well he was. That’s why there was some confusion in the beginning, as well, about your year. Because your year is almost entirely purebloods, more so than most other years, probably because of the war, they were all making sure they got their heir in in case they got killed. But a lot of purebloods and a lot of Sacred Twenty-Eight, for some of them, the way that they were raised…. You have to understand, nobody thought you would end up in Slytherin, and so they were all raised to know that Malfoy would be at the top. And so in the beginning, when you were here, the hierarchy was…complicated. It seems to have settled down a bit. Likely in part because you seem willing to let Malfoy take the lead and don’t question his authority for the most part.”

“Does that mean that they’re only friends with me because of this hierarchy stuff?”

“Merlin, no. They might defer to you, but that doesn’t necessarily make them like you. Sucking up to you might happen, but…actual friendship, that doesn’t have much to do with the hierarchy. Mostly.” She makes a face. “Don’t think too hard about it, snakelet. It’s not worth it. Would Malfoy be the same type of friend to you if you weren’t Harry Potter? Probably not. But you are, and that’s what matters. Any other questions?”

“Is that why other people look at me funny?” he asks. “Like they’re not really sure what to do with me or they think I’m going to hurt them or something?”

“You do notice,” she says. There’s something odd behind her voice. “Yes, you could do…” She hesitates. “You could do a lot of damage to somebody if you wanted to. The fact that you don’t, they don’t trust that, not really. You learn not to trust that here, and you being who you are, being what you are, it’s…confusing.”

“Is that why you’re helping me?”

“A little bit, snakelet. But I like you, too.” She stands up, heading over to ruffle his hair. “I’m serious when I tell you not to think too hard about this. If you want help figuring out who’s a true friend, I can help you with that. But eleven-year-olds are truly not that good of liars.”

Harry thinks, he is, but he doesn’t say it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two in one day. You're welcome.
> 
> Also, obviously being gender fluid has nothing to do with magic, but Harry has never heard of it before and is also eleven.


	13. Chapter 13

Most of the rest of November passes relatively uneventfully—Harry buries himself back in schoolwork and in the work for Draco, who complains loudly when virtually everyone in their year in the House has to go to muggleborn education and then comes back interrogating Harry on the different kinds of muggle money—and it’s mid-December before Harry knows it.

He put down his name to stay over the holiday because he’s not going back to the Dursleys until he absolutely has to, and he didn’t expect the names to stay posted but they did, and now the whole school knows Harry Potter is staying over for Christmas. Ron is, too, and the other Weasleys, and Harry’s glad for that, at least, so he won’t be entirely alone. It’s something about their parents going to see one of the other siblings, though Harry can’t remember which one. The one who works with dragons, he thinks.

Draco laughs when he sees the list and takes to, whenever he gets the chance, sneering, “At least _some_ people have families to go back home to. Proper families, at least.”

Nobody says anything about it so Harry doesn’t either, because he knows he doesn’t have a proper family to go back to, though he really wishes Draco would stop pointing it out to everyone. He already spends enough time talking about how much his father would do for him and how much his mother loves him, and Harry wouldn’t begrudge him that, he really wouldn’t, he doesn’t want anyone else to have anyone like Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Dudley at home, but he doesn’t need it rubbed in his face, either.

Finally, heading into the Great Hall for dinner the night before everyone is leaving to go back home, just as Fred is ruffling Harry’s hair and George is giving him a wink, Draco announces loudly, “At least some of us have parents who haven't left us behind,” and suddenly Harry can’t take it anymore, he just can’t, so even as he hears George snarl something he turns on his heel and pelts out of the Great Hall, pushing through the crowd of people who are trying to make their way in. Someone snaps something at him, but he doesn’t hear it over the rushing in his ears.

He doesn’t get why Draco would suddenly start making fun of him for this now. He knows why Dudley makes fun of him for it, Dudley who thinks his parents were drunks who died in a car accident, Dudley who would make fun of him for anything if he could think of it, but Draco at least knows his parents couldn’t help leaving him behind. Because it’s not as though they would have wanted to leave him behind, he doesn’t think, not if they sacrificed themselves to save him. He doesn’t think that’s how it works. If he was going to die for someone, he’d want it to be someone that he liked.

But maybe Draco doesn’t think that, or he thinks that it’s funny that he has parents and Harry doesn’t. Some of the kids at normal school thought that, that it was weird that Harry had to live with his Aunt and Uncle, but here people had seemed to look at it differently. But maybe not. It’s not like he should really expect anything different from them, from any of them.

Maybe Prefect Caster, at least. She’s been nice to him so far and hasn’t made fun of him, and after Halloween he’s pretty sure she thinks his parents dying was important and meant something.

And Ron is nice, and Hermione, and he thought Blaise wasn’t that bad but he never argued with Draco—because people never argue with Draco other than Harry, and maybe he shouldn’t blame them for that, like how he never blamed people for not standing up to Dudley, but Draco is small and thin and Harry does blame them.

He doesn’t want to go back to the dorm right now because he doesn’t want to have to face Draco or anyone else who thinks that it’s funny that his parents are dead, and everyone is at the feast right now, so he goes to find the dog.

He knows he probably shouldn’t, but he doesn’t really want to be alone with his thoughts, and it’s not like people can yell at him if they don’t know about it.

It takes a bit of wandering, mostly because last time he started from the Gryffindor common room door, but eventually he finds the room and, unlocking it, slips in.

It smells just as bad as last time, like half-digested meat in breath form, but he’s pretty sure the dog remembers him because it just growls inquisitively before plopping a person-sized head in front of him. Harry sits down in front of the head, leaning forward to scratch behind the ears. The dogs gives out a low whine.

“I hate this,” Harry tells it. Him. He’s going to pretend the dog is a him, because he’s not going to check. “I thought it was good here. I thought they liked me. But apparently it’s funny that I have no parents, that I don’t have a ‘proper family’.” He sounds like Draco just then, and he scowls because even though he’s trying to mock him he still doesn’t want to sound like Draco right now. “It’s not like it’s my fault.” He reaches out to pet the head in front of him again, and the entire dog sits down, the other two heads crowding near him. One growls like it’s not really sure if it’s supposed to like him.

Harry knows the feeling.

“Do you have a family? I guess if you do have a mum and a dad, you don’t get to see them because you’re stuck in here all the time. And I still don’t know if they let you go on walks or see anyone or be pet by anyone.” Harry pets the non-growling new head, then tentatively reaches out and pets the growling one. Just because sometimes he’s angry doesn’t mean he doesn’t still like Fred or George ruffling his hair. “I was kind of like you, before I came here. I was stuck in a cupboard all the time, and it was smaller than here but also I’m smaller than you so I fit, but you wouldn’t fit in there. But you’re big and this room isn’t that big, so it’s kind of the same. I didn’t have any lights in my cupboard so it was always dark, but you don’t have anyone to talk to you and neither did I. And I thought it would get better when they moved me into Dudley’s second bedroom, but then they didn’t talk to me at all, so I started talking to myself even more just so I heard someone talk.” His stomach growls, and he shrugs self-consciously. “I guess I got used to eating lots of food. I should probably stop eating as much before I have to go back so it’s not as bad and I’ll be used it, but I want to have big meals because I feel better and my head hurts less. I hope someone feeds you. At least the Dursleys fed me. I’d hate it even more if they kept me locked up _and_ they never fed me.”

He keeps talking to the dog some more, about school and about how frustrated he is and about the fact that even though he’s gotten a lot better at Potions Professor Snape still seems to hate him and he’s still not really sure why.

Other than that people just seem to hate him.

Maybe there’s just something wrong with him. But he doesn’t know what it is, because it’s not like he hurts people, or at least that he tries to hurt people. He doesn’t think he hurts anyone.

He hopes he doesn’t hurt anyone.

He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. People being hurt makes him sad.

Finally, he realizes he can’t keep sitting there because dinner’s going to be done at some point and everyone is going to go back to the dormitories and then it’ll be curfew soon and if he’s not back he’ll get in trouble, so he pats each of the heads and then stands up, telling the dog, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back, but I will if I can, and maybe I’ll bring you some meat if I can. Three pieces, so you each get one.”

And then he slips out the door and heads back.

He manages to beat everyone back to the dorm even though he hasn’t been keeping track of the time, and he doesn’t want to be sitting in the common room when everyone gets there because then it’ll be even more glaringly obvious that he left, so he heads to his bed, pulls the curtains around it, pulls out his Potions book, and starts to read.

He hears them come in, Crabbe and Goyle lumbering in first and Goyle immediately dropping onto his bed and starting snoring. Theo and Blaise come in arguing about some Transfiguration theory question that Harry doesn’t understand at all. And then Draco walks in.

He knocks on one of the posts of Harry’s bed. Harry ignores him. He knocks again, louder. Harry continues to ignore him.

Apparently Draco doesn’t like that, because he rips open one side of the curtains to glare at Harry. “Why are you ignoring me?” Harry pointedly lifts his book higher to block out Draco altogether. Draco sighs. “Look, can I talk to you?”

When Harry doesn’t respond, Draco drops down on his bed, making the mattress bound a little as he closes the curtain behind him. Harry finally tilts the book down to listen to him. “What? What do you want? Want to make fun of my dead parents again? Is that what you think is fun now?”

Draco blinks at him, looking startled. “What are you talking about?”

Harry realizes his fingers are clenched so hard on the book it feels like he’s about to start leaving indents, so he sets it aside carefully. “That. All of that before, for the last week, you mocking me for not having a _proper_ _family_ to go back to, for parents who _left_ _me_ _behind_. Poor Harry Potter who can’t go home because of his dead parents and his stupid muggle relatives. Well piss off.”

“They said—I thought you were mad because I was making fun of your friends’ family.”

Now it’s Harry’s turn to blink at him. “What friend?”

“Weasley. The Weasleys. I’ve been—their parents aren’t letting them come home for Christmas. I thought it was funny.”

Harry’s jaw clenches. “Yeah, well, at least they’ve got parents.”

“Why didn’t you—all this time you’ve thought that I—”

“What else was I supposed to think?” Harry bares his teeth at him. “Now piss off.”

“I thought you understood now that I wasn’t making fun of you.”

“I don’t care.” The anger is inside of him like a living, breathing, fiery thing. “Leave me alone, Draco. I don’t want to look at you right now.”

Draco looks hurt, though he’s a good liar, so Harry’s not sure he believes it. “But I—I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“Leave him alone,” Blaise says, then says something in a language Harry thinks might be French or maybe Italian, but whatever it is, Draco flinches a little. And Harry wants to feel bad, but he also doesn’t, because if he feels bad he’ll stop feeling mad, and then it’s just going to hurt again. So Harry blocks off the part of him that feels bad and just picks up his book and goes back to reading it.

When he looks up, Draco is gone.

\--

Harry doesn’t expect to see anyone in the common room when he finally emerges, because he didn’t recognize anyone from the list of people staying—other than the Weasleys, of course—so he’s surprised to see an older student sitting at a small table with a chess board in front of him. Harry stops in the doorway to stare at him.

“What are you doing here?”

The student looks up at him, and Harry cringes a little when he realizes that that was rude. But then he smiles. “Staying here for break. I’m Peter Angelov.”

Harry blinks at him. “Your name wasn’t on the list.”

“It is now.” Peter glances at the chess board just long enough to nudge a piece forward a square.

“Did you—did you stay because of me? Because I’m here?”

“We always have a seventh-year stay when someone else is staying over break.”

“You didn’t need to—”

“We’re not Gryffindors. We don’t leave kids alone in dungeons just so they can prove that they’re brave.” He picks up a piece of the opposite color and moves it. “It has nothing to do with you being Harry Potter, if that’s what you’re worried about. We just don’t leave kids alone.”

Harry hunches his shoulders, then forces them back down. “Thanks. You’re, uh—is that wizarding chess?”

Peter looks amused. “Does it sound like they’re shouting at me?”

“No?”

“No, this is a regular chess board.” He taps on the table. “You play?” Harry shakes his head. “You want to learn?”

“You don’t have to—”

“It’s an offer to teach you chess, Potter, not a wedding proposal. Caster said you were a bright kid, but you’ve got to stop looking for hooks in every offer.” He starts putting the chess board back to how it’s supposed to be. “Learn which offers will have hooks and which offers to question, or you might offend someone.”

“That sounds like something Prefect Caster would say.”

Peter smiles, and Harry heads over to sit in the chair across from him. “We learned together.”

Harry pokes at the table. “Are you a pureblood?”

“People outside of Britain—well, outside of Western Europe, I suppose—don’t count blood the same way you all do. The Czars traced their lines, I think, but otherwise people don’t care that much.”

“You sound British.”

He says something in a language Harry doesn’t understand, harsh and rough-sounding, then grins. “That sound foreign enough for you? Come on, let’s play chess.”

\--

Harry’s terrible at chess. He’s amazingly terrible at chess. Peter seems amused by how terrible he is at chess, but Harry kind of wishes he could find something he’s good at. Other than Quidditch, but he can only play Quidditch during games and practices but chess is something that can be played all the time.

They are so few of them that they all sit at one table for meals, so Harry sits next to Ron and across from Fred and George, who are debating quietly what to do to the giant Christmas tree in the corner of the Great Hall. Harry half-listens, trying to follow both that and Ron’s explanation of chess strategies.

“—really does help to play with wizarding chess pieces—they give you the instructions. Of course, it can get a bit confusing when they’re suggesting different strategies, and when they get old enough they just start shouting at you, but they know the rules and it can make it easier to keep them straight in your head. Bill’s really good at chess—he said it’s what makes him so good as a curse-breaker, because you have to be able to keep a bunch of different things in your head and have to be able to think a number of steps ahead and untangle things that happen unexpectedly. I could send him an owl, ask him for some tips for learning—”

Harry listens to Ron talk about all of the things he could ask Bill and Fred and George talk about trying to turn the Christmas tree into Gryffindor colors, complete with roaring lions for all of the ornaments, and he feels something warm and happy flutter in his chest.


	14. Chapter 14

Harry wakes up to silence which, while having been there for the past couple days, is still weird to him. It makes the dungeon—which doesn’t normally bother him that much—feel even more dungeony. He’s not really sure why the House full of the richest, ponciest students is the one in the dungeon, though it probably has to do with some silly old tradition.

Maybe the other House common rooms catch fire.

Torn between amusement and mild horror at the thought, Harry climbs out of bed—and promptly trips over a big pile of boxes. Wrapped boxes.

Presents.

Joy fills him, followed immediately by the sobering thought that nobody would be sending him presents. Especially not this many.

So he sits down on the side of his bed, away from the pile, and says, “Uh. House elf?”

There’s a pop, and then a small person with big ears and bigger eyes is standing in front of Harry. She tugs on one ear. “Yes?”

“Sorry,” he says, a little uncomfortable. “I don’t know your name.”

Her eyes go impractically wider. “I is Zonky. And you is Harry Potter.”

Harry nods. “I, uh—I was assuming one of you put these here, and I was wondering who they were for.”

“They is for you. I is one of the Slytherin House elves, and I is being putting the presents here for you.”

“Oh.” Presents. He’s never had presents. “Thank you, Zonky.” Something strikes him. “Did I—did I pull you away from your Christmas? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make more work for you.”

Zonky’s eyes, alarmingly, fill with tears, and then she says firmly, “Zonky is being a good elf. And Zonky is a _Slytherin_ house elf. And you is being a Slytherin.” She nods decisively, like that settles everything.”

“Oh,” Harry repeats, feeling out of his depths.

“I is being happy when I hears that Harry Potter is being a Slytherin. The other house elves is being jealous. We has all heard stories of Harry Potter.” Her eyes fill with tears again. “I is knowing Harry Potter’s James Potter because Harry Potter’s James Potter was coming to the kitchen and being _nice_ to the house elves. We was all sad when Harry Potter’s James Potter was dying.”

Harry’s breath catches. “My father? You knew my father?”

“Oh yes.” Zonky nods. “I was being just a kitchen elf with no House then, and we kitchen elves all knows Harry Potter’s James Potter.”

“Thank you, Zonky. Can I—is there anything I can do to make it easier for house elves?”

She shakes her head. “We is house elves, Harry Potter. We is liking work.”

Harry supposes he can understand that. When the Dursleys didn’t bother him, he didn’t mind cooking or gardening. Though he doesn’t want to do it all the time. “Well, thanks, Zonky. Happy Christmas.”

Her eyes go even wider, and then she squeaks, “Happy Christmas, Harry Potter,” and vanishes.

Harry stares at where Zonky had disappeared, kind of wishing that she was still around so he could ask her more about his father. But if she’s doing work he doesn’t want to keep her away from it for too long and get her in trouble.

But also, presents.

Harry pulls all of the presents onto his bed, laying them out around him. He’s a little alarmed to see ones from Draco and Blaise and Theo because he didn’t think to send anything to them. He’s not even sure how he would send something to them, or what, but even if he knew, he just hadn’t thought of it. Presents are something other people deal with.

There are other presents, too, but he opens Draco’s first; the package contains a pair of the softest gloves he’s ever felt, and when he slips them on they fit perfectly. They’re fingerless, but as he’s tracing the edge of one of them they grow upwards to cover his fingers, too. He wiggles his fingers, grinning at them. He loves magic.

Blaise’s present is a magical family tree where he can say anyone’s name and it’ll give their family tree for five generations in either direction, and if he touches one of the ancestors it’ll shift to show their family tree. It’s a way to help him learn it, which he appreciates because Draco has been driving him nuts making him memorize all of them.

Theo gave him a practice snitch, which flits around until Harry pokes it, and then it falls limp again.

The Dursleys sent him a fifty pence note, which amazes him mostly because he has no idea how they managed to get it to him. He has the brief, entertaining image of Uncle Vernon being pecked at by an owl while he swears at it and tries to attach the envelope.

That leaves two presents left, and the first one he pulls open reveals a green knit sweater with a silver H and a card from Mrs. Weasley. He fingers the edge of the material for a second, thinking, a mother made him a sweater. It’s not his mother, but it’s someone’s mother, and she made him a sweater and that’s what mothers do, and his heart hurts a little in his chest but he’s smiling, too.

The last present is a cloak, slick and slippery and with a note with no name, and when he drapes it over his hand it goes invisible, and he’s not quite sure what’s going on so he lays it down carefully back on his bed and, cradling the sweater to his chest, heads out of the room. Peter isn’t in the common room so Harry just goes to the Great Hall.

It’s mostly empty—it must be pretty early, he realizes, having forgotten to check the time before he left. It’s almost impossible to tell the time from the Slytherin dorms, though he’s heard that some of the older students have charmed mirrors to show them the outside. None of the first years know how to do that, though.

They’re only using one table right now, so he takes a seat, sets the sweater down next to him, and starts eating.

He’s so engaged in eating, in fact, that he doesn’t notice the Weasleys approaching until there’s an arm on each shoulder and Fred is saying, “Well, lookie here.”

Harry looks up at him, smiling, then remembers the sweater and grabs it just before Fred and George sit down on either side of him. Ron is still a few feet away, walking up on the other side to sit across from him.

“Your, uh—I think your mum sent me a sweater. Well, I know your mum sent me a sweater.” Harry gestures with the sweater, narrowly missing dipping a sleeve in his tea. “I guess I’m just wondering why your mum sent me a sweater.”

“Ooh,” George says, “you got a Weasley sweater. We get them every year. Mum knits one for each of us.”

“I’m Gred,” Fred says, displaying the G proudly on his chest.

“And I’m Forge.”

“We even got Percy in his.”

“P for pratty Prefect Percy.”

Ron sits down across from them. “Oh, she _did_ send one. I mentioned—well you said you don’t get presents, so—” His entire face flushes a dull red, and Harry feels that little pocket of joy grow in his chest again.

He grins at him. “Thanks, mate.”

“Now put it on,” George tells him.

Harry pulls off his glasses and sticks them on the table in front of him, then pulls the sweater over his head. It’s a bit big, but everything is big on him, and it feels warm and comfortable as it settles over him.

George nudges his shoulder. “Now you look like one of us.”

“Other than the green,” Fred adds.

“Mum probably thought Ron was barmy, asking her to knit a sweater for a Slytherin.”

“We’ve got a snake in our midst.”

Harry thinks of telling them the story of him setting the snake on Dudley, because he thinks they’ll find it funny, but then food pops up in front of the rest of them and they all get distracted by Ron attempting to stuff sausage, bacon, and a piece of toast in his mouth at the same time.

One of them. He’s never been one of anybody before, except for maybe Slytherin, but even then he’s always different, always a little bit apart. But the Weasleys—they really do seem to like him.

He plays with the Weasleys for a while—they get in a massive snowball fight a couple days later that leaves Harry soaked and shivering but with a grin so wide it feels like it’s going to slip his face apart. None of the teachers came out to stop them—probably remembering when the twins had pelted the back of Quirrell’s head with snowballs—so it’s just them and one of the Hufflepuffs who stayed and a couple of the Ravenclaws, and it’s the most fun Harry’s had in a long time.

He’s still grinning when he stumbles into the Slytherin common room—the password is _rozhdestvo_ , which he struggles to twist his mouth around—and sees Peter sitting at the table Harry has dubbed his, a half-done game of chess in front of him. Peter looks up, rolling his eyes at Harry. “Professor Snape will kill me if you catch your death while I’m here.”

“I’m fine,” Harry says, though the fact that he has to say it between the chattering of his teeth probably undermines him a bit.

“Sure you are.” Peter pulls out his wand, pointing it at Harry, and a second later warm floods though him, sinking in all the way to his bones. All of the water drops out of his clothes to fall in a rush to the floor.

Harry shakes the water off of his shoes, then heads over to drop down on one of the couches. “What would you be doing if you weren’t stuck here watching me?”

Peter laughs. “Believe me, being here is preferable to that, so I’m happy to have an excuse to skip out on it. My squib aunt moved to America and married a televangelist—some barmy religious fanatic who rants about it on the telly—so every year we go sit through dinner with them and their awful children. I volunteered to stay.”

That sounds terrible to Harry, whose Aunt and Uncle were only religious enough to match the neighbors, which was to say that they celebrated Christmas and Easter and not much else. He can’t imagine how much worse they would have been if they had spent all their time praying or trying to cast out the evil in him or whatever it is religious people do. “So you’re welcome, then, I guess.”

Peter snorts. “Right.” He turns back to the chess board.

After a moment, Harry says, “You don’t, uh…you don’t seem to be all that impressed with me. With me being me, I mean. Not that I mind, but…”

Peter glances in his direction. “The way I see it, you defeating He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was a feat of accidental magic. Extraordinary accidental magic, and I’m ever so grateful for it, but you were one and it was an accident. And I don’t need you for my own political gain, so.” He shrugs. “You seem like a bright kid to me, but you’re eleven and that’s it.”

Harry thinks about that for a second, then nods. “Cool.”

“Cool?”

“I don’t know. I don’t need people—” There’s a pop, and Zonky appears next to Peter. “Hi, Zonky.”

Zonky sets a newspaper down on Peter’s table, then turns to look at Harry. “Harry Potter is being nice to house elves just like Harry Potter’s James Potter.” Her eyes are glistening a little. “Harry Potter is wishing Zonky a Happy Christmas and saying hi to Zonky.”

Harry makes a face. “Er, yeah. You’re people, too.”

Zonky squeaks and disappears.

Harry looks at Peter. “Do you, uh—what just happened?”

“People don’t consider house elves as people.”

“Well, that’s stupid. I mean, they can talk about stuff, can’t they? And they can do magic. They’re all short and kind of weird, but they’re…people.” And Harry was like them, too, when he’s at the Dursleys, and he’s a person. He knows he’s a person.

“Whatever you—” Peter trails off, staring down at the newspaper in front of him. “Bloody hell.”

“What?”

“They—I haven’t seen a muggle newspaper since, shit, beginning of August. Bloody _hell_.” He pulls open the newspaper, unfolding it all the way. “I—you know what the Soviet Union is, right?”

“Course I do,” Harry says, feeling a little offended. He went to school. Of course he knows what the Soviet Union is.

“There was a coup in Russia, in August it looks like, and they’re—” Peter looks up at Harry with wide eyes. “They’re gone. The Soviet Union is gone. _Bozhe moy_. We all thought— _bozhe moy_.” He looks at the newspaper again. “I suppose I should not be surprised, but I—” Peter stands, eyes fixed on the newspaper, and walks out of the common room.

Harry stares after him, feeling a little confused, then heads to his dorm to grab his History textbook. One day he will actually get through this textbook. It will happen.

Sometimes later, Peter wanders back into the room, looking a little less shaken, snow dusting his hair. He looks at Harry. “You want to learn any more chess, Potter?”

“Sure.” Harry hops up, heading over to the other side of the table while Peter starts resetting the board. “Are you okay?”

It takes Peter a second, his hands still moving without him seeming to think about it. “I’m fine. I have family in Russia, a few cousins in Durmstrang, and Yugoslavia has…Yugoslavia looks like it could go badly. So I’m concerned about my family.” He settles the last piece in place. “Growing up, you think the world’s going to stay the same for the rest of your life. No matter how horrible it is, it always seems like that’s forever.”

He still seems unhappy, so Harry asks, “What’s the wizarding world like in Russia?”

Peter smiles. “Make a move and I’ll tell you.” Harry moves a pawn. “Keep in mind, I’m as British as you are, so most of this is from stories from my parents and my _babushka_. Magic—wizardry—survived better under Russian Orthodoxy than under The Roman Catholic Church or C of E. Some of it—enough of it—could be explained away as religious mysticism, and so was less separate from life than in the West. They were part of the Church for a long time, but they split at some point. It was after the _raskol_ —the _staroobryadtsy_ splitting off from the rest of the Church. During the reign of _Pyotr Velikiy_ , I think, because he was against the church. The czars were wizards, so once the revolution happened there was—a lot of our families left. A lot stayed, but…a lot of us came here.” He laughs, though it sounds a little bitter. “And then were killed by Grindelwald or Voldemort, so I suppose there’s nowhere we can run.”

“Oh,” Harry says. He’s not really sure what to say to that, so he just moves another piece.

“We’re not all Russian Orthodox,” Peter says almost absently, moving one of his pawns. “A lot of the Jewish wizards were purged, though, or they fled to America. Even wizards aren’t free from muggle horrors.”

“I know,” Harry says without thinking, and Peter looks sharply up at him. To cover the blunder, he asks, “So they all use wands and stuff too, right? That’s all the same?”

“There are stories that a long time ago some of them used rosaries, and each bead was filled with a magical focus, but I’m not really sure if that’s true. Other than that, yes, they use wands as well.” He gestures with his chin towards the board. “What moves could I make now?”

It takes Harry a second to readjust his thinking, and then he blinks down at the board. “What?”

“What moves could I make? You must be able to see what people may do as well as what you can do.”

“I, uh—”

Peter leans back in his chair. “I’ll wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter literally exists because I wanted to acknowledge the dissolution of the Soviet Union. (Also obviously Eastern Europe doesn't entirely consist of Russia and neither did the USSR. And I don't remember what was said in canon if anything was, but whatever.)


	15. Chapter 15

Draco is avoiding him when he gets back.

It takes Harry a little while to notice, mostly because he’s so used to people ignoring him that he doesn’t really pay attention to it anymore, but when Draco heads to the bathroom and stays there until Harry closes the curtains around his bed, he figures that something must be going on.

So after he hears Draco come back out and sit down on his bed, Harry opens his curtains and drops down to pad over to him.

Draco still isn’t look at him, so he sits down on the bed next to him, poking him in the shoulder. “Are you mad at me?”

That makes Draco look up. “What? I mean, what are you—why would you ask me that?”

Harry would have thought that would be obvious. “Because you’ve stayed as far away from me as you can since you got back.”

“Because I thought _you_ were mad at me.”

Now it’s Harry’s turn to be confused. “Why would I be mad at you?”

Draco pokes at his own knee, staring at it. “Well, you were mad at me before, and then you were still too mad to send me a Christmas present, so I thought you were still…mad.”

“Oh.” Harry hadn’t thought that not sending a present would make Draco think he was angry. “Sorry.”

Draco’s head shoots up. “What?”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think that. I’ve just never had Christmas presents before or had any money, so I didn’t think to get anyone any. Not that I know how I would have gotten them or how I would have sent them to you, but I—I guess I just didn’t think of it. So sorry.”

Draco is gaping at him now. “You’ve never had _presents_ before?”

“No, I—” Harry thinks about that for a second. “Well, I guess I have.” Draco relaxes. “Hagrid gave me a cake for my birthday, and Hedwig, and he gave me ice cream. So those are presents. And your mother sent me my broom. I forgot about those.” He grins. “Thanks, Draco. I shouldn’t have forgotten those.”

“But other than that, you’ve never—” Draco makes a weird complicated pureblood noise. “What about your muggles?”

“My aunt and uncle?” Harry remembers the 50 pence coin, which is sitting with the other presents next to the bed. “Oh, you’ll like this.” He heads over to grab it, then comes back and shows it to Draco. “They sent me this; I’m not really sure why. They’ve never given me anything before.”

Draco peers at it. “What is it?”

“Money. Muggle money.” Harry hands it over, and Draco turns it over a couple times in his hand, looking entranced by the portrait of the Queen. “It’s not worth much, just 50p.”

“How quaint.” Draco runs a finger along one edge. “It’s not even round. And who is this on here?”

“What do you—it’s the Queen.”

“Oh, right, muggles still use a Queen. Tell me she doesn’t make the decisions for the muggle part of the country, though I suppose, as backwards as muggles are, it would make sense to have someone with good breeding running them.”

Harry shakes his head. “No, she’s just a—” He waves his hand. “A person who’s there but doesn’t decide anything but is still important.”

“A figurehead.” Draco goes back to examining the coin with great enthusiasm. “Bizarre.”

“You can keep it if you want,” Harry tells him. “I can’t do much with it.”

“Thanks.” Draco beams at him.

“Oh,” Harry says after a second, because he wants to keep talking to Draco after not seeing him and also because he wants to look smart because Draco always knows more than him, knows more words and more spells and more about the wizarding world then him. “Did you hear that the Soviet Union broke up?”

“Of course,” Draco says after a second, trying to sound lofty, though Harry thinks he mostly sounds like he didn’t know about it. “Father’s probably glad now that he didn’t send me to Durmstrang.”

Peter had mentioned that, too. “Durmstrang?”

“The main wizarding school in Eastern Europe. It’s in Bulgaria. Mother said it was too far, though, wanted me to stay in Britain.”

That doesn’t make any sense. “Why wouldn’t he want you here?”

Draco’s lips thin. “Father…doesn’t like Dumbledore. He thinks he’s mad, but also I heard him talking to mother, and I think some of it had to do with the war. Father and Dumbledore were on opposite sides.”

“And your mother?”

Draco pokes at his knee again. “Do you hate me because my father worked with—with the Dark Lord?”

“Do you want me dead?”

“Of course not.”

“Then no. You’re not your father.”

“But he’s my _father_.”

“I’m not like my Uncle.” Harry shrugs. “I don’t hate you. I don’t want to hate you. You’re my friend.”

Draco looks at him. “What if I want to be like him? He’s my father. He’s _Lucius Malfoy_.”

Harry’s not really sure what to say to that, because he’s never met Mr. Malfoy, he doesn’t know Mr. Malfoy, but he also doesn’t want Draco to hate him or want to kill him or be like Voldemort. “I guess you—I don’t know.” He feels abruptly awful. “If you want to hurt me, I don’t think we can be friends.”

Draco jerks. “My father wouldn’t _hurt_ you. He doesn’t hurt people. He doesn’t hurt children. He was just on the Dark Lord’s side.” He chews on the side of his thumb then seems to realize what he’s doing and stops. “How was your Christmas?”

Harry shrugs. “It was good. Mrs. Weasley—Ron’s mum—gave me a sweater. And I like the gloves.” He remembers the cloak. “Oh yeah, I have something cool to show you. I’m not sure who gave it to me.”

“Is it—do you think it’s Dark? If you don’t know who gave it to you?”

“I don’t think so.” Harry hops off the bed again and heads back over to his pile to grab the cloak. It feels slick and makes his arms disappear, though when he crumples it up on and drops on Draco’s bed, it doesn’t make the bed disappear.

Draco blinks down at it. “What is this?”

“Here, stick your arm under it.”

Draco picks it open and sticks his arm under it, then gapes at it when it disappears. “Is this—it’s an _invisibility cloak_? Who would give you an invisibility cloak? Not that you’re not…you, but—I don’t even know what kind of invisibility cloak this is. It doesn’t look like Demiguise hair, or—this is amazing.” Draco turns an awed look on Harry. “My father won’t even give me one of these. And you don’t know who gave it to you?”

“The note just said it used to belong to my father.”

“Your _father_?” Draco looks considering for a second. “Well, I guess that makes sense. That it would be a pureblood who would have one of these, I mean.”

Harry tenses. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Just that—well, it might be an heirloom, I guess, and they’re expensive. Though if your father had it then it can’t be Demiguise hair, because they stop working after a while.” Draco retracts his hand out from under it to start stroking the top of it. “Have you used it yet?”

Harry shakes his head. “No, I wanted to show it to you first. I wasn’t really sure what it was.”

“Well, it’s an invisibility cloak, and I expect you to let me use it at some point.”

“Of course. But only after I use it first.”

Draco grins at him. “Of course.”

\--

The first day back to school is a good day. Most of his classmates don’t seem to want to be back, but Harry was getting bored sitting around doing nothing—it’s the longest amount of time he’s spent without work in as long as he can remember—and so he spent a lot of his spare time studying. He’s not like Hermione—nobody, he thinks, is like Hermione—but he’s actually gotten pretty far in the History of Magic textbook, and he feels like he’s memorized most of the Potion’s book at this point. It’s not intuitive for him the way it is for Draco, but he actually thinks he might end up not half bad at it.

And during Potions he manages to brew the potion correctly, though Snape only gives credit to Draco. But Harry’s okay with that, because Draco did all of his stuff right too, and he doesn’t even sneer at Neville when he melts through the bottom of his cauldron halfway through class.

But mostly Harry is just excited for all of his friends to be back. He’s never had friends before, and there’s this little bit of fear that, when they leave, he’s not going to see them again.

It’s stupid, he knows, but it’s there anyway.

He makes plans that night to go out with the cloak on. He’s not going to look for anything in particular, and maybe it’s a bad idea to go out once everyone gets back, but he didn’t want to do it before Draco could tell him what it was.

It’s nice to be able to wander around knowing nobody can see him, knowing that he doesn’t need to stick to shadows and that he’s safe.

It doesn’t make him stupid—he knows he still needs to be quiet, knows it doesn’t make him silent, knows he still needs to step like he would at the Dursleys when any little squeak could get him locked in his cupboard for the day or so.

He doesn’t want to visit the dog—he’ll do that some other time, though he should have done it more during Christmas break when fewer people were around and so he was less likely to get caught—so he wanders around a different part of the castle instead, sort of aimless because he doesn’t know what there is to look for. The library has a restricted section, he knows, and maybe he’ll look at that at some point, but he feels like he should check that out when there’s something he actually wants to look for, because he’s not sure if he’ll be able to get in more than once.

He’s not entirely sure where he ends up, but it’s a big room, empty other than a mirror standing at one end of it. Curious as to why a mirror is alone in a room—maybe it’s a magic mirror—he wanders over to it, pulling off his Invisibility Cloak as he goes.

And then he stops, staring, because there are two people behind him, a man and a woman, so close that they almost have their hands on his shoulders, and he whips around to see—

Nothing.

Nobody.

There’s nobody there, but when he looks in the mirror again, there they are, a man with messy brown hair and a crooked smile on one side of him and on the other a woman with long red hair and the brightest green eyes he’s ever seen—

Outside of himself.

His heart skips a beat, and he presses a hand to his chest as the ache blooms, spreads. “Mum? Dad?”

The woman—his mum—nods, smiling at him, and he tries to smile back, though it feels like his face is shaking, trembling, and he realizes after a second that he’s trying. He drops to his knees in front of mirror, ignoring the pain that radiates through them as he hits the floor. His mum and dad keep standing behind him, hands on his shoulders.

He’s surprised at how dark his dad is, though Harry himself has always been tanner than everyone around him. Lighter than the Patil sisters and Dean Thomas, and he had always assumed it was just because he spent so much time working outside. Though maybe it’s because of his dad.

He’s really happy to know that, because he hadn’t know anything about his dad before.

It makes his mom look really light, though, with her hand near his neck. Most people look like that compared to him, though, so he’s used to it.

He’s so busy staring at them that it takes them a few minutes to realize they look like they’re only a couple years older than Prefect Caster, maybe. And he realizes that he has no idea how old his parents were when they died. He doesn’t know much about his parents at all.

“I really miss you,” he tells them. “I wish you were still here. I wish you could tell me everything about Hogwarts and about magic and you could take care of my instead of the Dursleys.” His dad ruffles his hair, hand lingering there for a second, and Harry hunches over, wishing he could _feel it_ , wishing he knew what it felt like to have a dad mess up his hair or a mum touch his shoulder.

Suddenly, he remembers his House, and he ducks his head a little more. He hopes they won’t be too mad at him. “I’m, uh—I’m a Slytherin. By the way. I hope you’re not—I know you were both Gryffindor, and I hope you’re not mad at me. I—I like it in Slytherin, most of the time. It would probably be easier if I knew what was going on, but that would have only happened if I was with you guys, and then I probably wouldn’t be Slytherin, so it—” He shrugs. “I guess I just hope you’re not mad at me.”

He looks up to see his mother smiling at him and his dad crouching down next to him to put an arm he can’t feel around his shoulders. And he starts to sob.

\--

Harry finds Prefect Caster the next day while she’s studying in the Common Room; she looks up at him after a second of him hovering nervously next to her. “What can I do for you, snakelet?”

“Can I ask you something? If you’re not busy? Or when you’re not busy? I can come back when you’re not busy. If you’re busy.”

She smiles. “I have time. Do you want to talk here or somewhere more private?”

“Uh, here is fine.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What do you know about my parents?”

She stares at him for a minute, then stands. “Come on, snakelet. Let’s have this conversation somewhere with fewer ears.”

Harry doesn’t really know why that’s necessary, but he followers her anyway as she heads out of the Common room and down the hallway into an unoccupied room. He’s not really sure it was originally for, but now it’s one of the rooms they use as a study room when they don’t want to be in the library and the Common Room is full.

Prefect Caster sits in one of the chairs, gesturing for Harry to sit in another. He does, pulling it around so it’s in front of her.

“What is this about your parents, then?”

“I, um.” Harry scrubs at his forehead then realizes what he’s doing and stops. She doesn’t look at it. “Do you know anything about my parents? I don’t—there’s not really a reason you should, I guess, but at the Halloween thing, you—”

“I do.”

“How?”

“Every book about the war talks about them. How they were part of the resistance against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, how they both died to protect you. Why are you asking?”

“Well I was wondering, uh. Do you know how old they were? When they died, I mean? I don’t—I don’t know when they were born. And I guess I could ask Professor McGonagall because she’s Head of Gryffindor and they were in Gryffindor and so she probably knows, but I…didn’t want to. Because she’s not—us.”

Prefect Caster smiles at that. “Well I’m honored you came to me. According to what I’ve read, your parents were born in 1960. They were in Hogwarts together, 1971 to 1978.”

  1. “Twenty-one. They were twenty-one when they died.”



“Yeah.” She nods, the smile slipping a little. “They were. I’m sorry.”

Prefect Caster is seventeen. She’s almost as old as his parents were when they died. “You’re—you’re not going to die, right? I mean, you’re—you’re not going to die.”

“Oh, snakelet.” She leans forward and reaches for his hand; he flinches but then lets her take them. “There isn’t a war going on. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is gone, thanks to you. Wizards live a long time, and we’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.”

“I’m not…I’m not worried about me. I mean, I—”

“I appreciate your concern, but I will live a safe life. I’m risk averse. I have no plans of seeking out a war.”

“Would you, uh.” He rubs his hand against his mouth. “Would you fight in a resistance, if there was one? If there was another war?”

“There won’t be another war.”

“But if there was?” Harry pressed.

Prefect Caster sighs, sitting back in her chair. It looks like she’s really thinking about it, so he doesn’t interrupt her. Finally, she leans forward. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Fighting isn’t my thing, Potter. Snakelet. Like I said, I’m risk averse. That’s not the sort of thing I do.” She smiles. “If it was against you, I don’t think I’d resist.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re powerful, snakelet. Politically powerful. If anyone was going to manage to take over, it’s you.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, good, then.” She smiles, leaning forward to ruffle his hair. “See, there’s nothing to worry about. I have to get back to studying, but I’ll talk to you later about the Wizengamot seat. And anything else you want to know about your parents.”

“Thank you, Prefect Caster.”

“Get some sleep, snakelet. You look like you could use it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm officially done with finals. Sorry for the delay.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One scene partially taken from the book. You'll be able to spot it. It's been adapted for my purposes.

Harry goes back to the mirror the next night, and the next, and the ones after that because it has his _parents_ , and he doesn’t know how or why but he doesn’t care because they’re his _parents_. And mostly he just sits there and talks to them, tells them how much he wants to get to know him, how he hopes he’s making them proud.

Because everyone who has talked about his parents has talked about how good they are—how good they were—and how they were heroes, and he doesn’t think he’s a hero but he thinks they are, and they’re his parents, and having them be proud of him would mean that he was doing something right even though it doesn’t always feel like it.

He’s tired, though, all the time, because he’s not sleeping at night, and Ron doesn’t notice because Ron doesn’t notice things like that—which Harry doesn’t mind because there are too many eyes on him already and he likes having a friend who just treats him like he’s normal—but Hermione has started asking when he sees her at the library. And finally one night Draco bursts out, “Where are you going every night?”

Harry hadn’t thought that Draco might want to see it, but maybe he would, so Harry says, “I’ll show you.”

Draco beams at hm. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Harry likes this idea, now that he’s thinking about it. “You might like it too. Just wait until everyone else is asleep, and I’ll show you.” And then Draco will get to see his parents too, Harry’s parents, and maybe Harry will be able to impress him with that. Not that it’ll be able to be as good as Mrs. Malfoy giving him a broom, but it’s still something.

So after Blaise and Theo stop studying Charms and go to sleep, Harry pulls out the Cloak and leads Draco to the door to the dorm before throwing it over both of them. There are only a couple people in the Common Room, and they just wait for one of them to open the door—because older students have later curfews than first-years—to slip out behind him. Draco is bad at being quiet, breathing too loudly and stepping too hard, but Harry doesn’t think he probably had to be quiet in his house, so Harry understands.

Harry waits until they’re in the room with the mirror with the door closed before pulling the Cloak off of both of them. He gestures towards the mirror. “See?”

“What?” Draco heads towards the mirror, but Harry heads forward and gets there first, grinning when his parents show up.

Harry turns and gestures towards them in the mirror. “See?”

“I just see us.”

Harry turns back around, and this time he sees just him and Draco a bit behind him, looking confused. “Huh.” He moves out of the way so he’s not in it, saying, “I see my parents in it, though I think it might show you what you want to see, so maybe having two of us confuses it. What do you see?”

Draco is staring at himself in the mirror, his face so pale it’s almost gray, like all of the life has been sucked out of him. He shakes his head. “That’s not—that’s not what I want.”

He sounds…wrong. Scared, almost, Harry thinks, though there’s nothing that Harry thinks he should be afraid of. “Do you see your parents too? Maybe that’s what it shows you.”

Draco is shaking his head now, eyes still fixed on whatever he’s seeing in the mirror. Harry can only see Draco’s reflection, so he’s not sure what could be on the mirror. “No, I’m not—this isn’t what I _want_.” And then he turns and pelts out of the room, ignoring Harry’s hissed calls for him to come back, that he’ll get caught and get in trouble.

Harry feels like he should follow after him, but he wants to see his parents again, so he walks in front of the mirror again. And it is his parents again, no matter whatever happened with Draco when he looked at it, and Harry feels his split into a smile as his dad reaches up to rest a hand on his shoulder.

\--

Draco doesn’t look at him the next day, though he sits through classes yawning almost as much as Harry, and he’s such a mess during Potions he almost puts in two crushed flubberworms instead of half of one, which would have made the potion start putting out noxious fumes that would have poisoned everyone in the classroom. Instead, Harry stops him and they end up with a potion that let’s off a soft smell of chocolate, mint, and roast pork.

Harry isn’t really sure what to do, because Draco clearly doesn’t want to tell him what’s wrong, and he’s not sure what the mirror showed him, but it upset him so much he’s been snapping at everyone and talking loudly all day to everyone who isn’t Harry about how great his father is and how next year his father will buy him the new Nimbus so that he can make the Quidditch team. He only stops talking about that last part when he mentions that he might try to take Harry’s spot and Higgs, walking past to his spot in the Great Hall, bursts out laughing. Harry feels a little bad for that, though there’s also a little warm part of him that’s happy his teammates have so much faith in him. That only makes Draco glare at him harder when he’s not avoiding looking at him.

So Harry sits with Hermione in the library that night, comparing notes on the Potions paper because he thinks that the reason moonstone needs to be added to the Anti-Acne Potion is because of what the textbook talked about with its beautification properties and Hermione thinks it’s because of a theory some book talked about involving the interaction between moonstone and lacewing fly wings.

A while into it, after Hermione has written and then scratched out half a dozen sentences on her draft paper, she looks around lowers her voice, and asks, “Are you and Malfoy fighting?”

Harry shrugs, keeping his head down because he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t know how to talk about it. He doesn’t even really know what there is to talk about. He keeps writing, flinching and almost splattering ink all over his paper when she pokes him in the back of the hand with her quill point. When he looks up at her, she’s scowling at him.

“You both looked really unhappy during lunch and dinner tonight, and neither of you look like you’ve slept, and Malfoy’s really pale. Paler than usual.”

“I didn’t know you spent that much time examining Draco’s complexion,” Harry drawls, and Hermione flushes.

“I don’t,” she says hotly, then lowers her voice with a guilty look around the library. “I don’t, and I don’t like him, and I don’t care if he’s happy because he thinks I’m just a filthy useless muggleborn, but you’re my friend, and him being unhappy apparently makes you unhappy, so I want to know what’s going on.”

Harry doesn’t really want to tell her about the mirror because then he’ll get a lecture about sneaking out, and he doesn’t think she’ll understand wanting to see his parents because she has both of her parents and so she doesn’t think about it, so he just shrugs again. “I don’t know why he’s mad at me. But I can’t make Draco be different, so.” Harry shrugs again, putting his head back down to write more of his paper. "He might not hate you.”

“He does.”

Harry doesn’t have anything to say to that, because yeah, he does, so he just goes back to work.

\--

Harry goes back out to the mirror that night, and Draco is trying really hard to pretend to be asleep when Harry leaves so he doesn’t say anything to him. He’s gotten good at finding the room and so he goes straight there so he can sit on the floor and talk to his parents and all of his other relatives who stretch back as far as he can see. It’s like having his whole real family right there in that mirror, everyone he needs right there, and the only thing that would make it better would be if he could feel their touch, but it’s still his entire family right there with him.

It’s everything he needs.

Except.

“So—back again, Harry?”

Harry flinches so violently he almost tips over, his entire body going cold like ice is snaking through his veins and crystalizing his blood along the way. Spinning around, he sees Professor Dumbledore sitting at one of the desks near the wall, and either Harry had walked past him without even noticing—something that would have gotten him locked in the cupboard for days at the Dursleys—or Professor Dumbledore walked in after him and Harry hadn’t heard him.

“I—I didn’t see you there, sir.”

“Strange how short-sighted being invisible can make you,” Dumbledore says, and after a second Harry realizes he’s smiling, which probably means he’s not too mad. Uncle Vernon never smiles when he’s mad, not really mad. But then he gets up and starts walking towards Harry, who tenses until Dumbledore just sits down next to him. “So, you like hundreds before you have discovered the delights of the Mirror Erised.”

“I didn’t know it was called that, sir.”

“But I expect you’ve realized by now what it does.”

“It—it shows you what you want to see. But Draco, he said what he saw wasn’t what he wanted, so maybe it doesn’t.”

“Ah, Mr. Malfoy. What you must understand is that it shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. Who, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. I suspect young Mr. Malfoy may have realized that his deepest desire was not in fact what he expected to see. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.

“The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever _do_ run aross it, you will not be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don’t you put that admirable Cloak back on and get off to bed.”

Harry stands, and Dumbledore flows to his feet without seeming to actually stand.

“Sir—Professor Dumbledore? Can I ask you something?”

“Obviously, you’ve just done so. You may ask me one more thing, however.”

“What do you see when you look in the Mirror?”

“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.”

Harry stares at him.

“One can never have enough socks. Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.” He nods towards the door. “Off you go, my boy. And I suggest you keep the Cloak on. Professor Snape will be patrolling in this area soon, and I suspect he will be rather cross should he find you out of bed at this time of night.” He gives Harry a wink and a smile before pressing a finger to his lips. Harry grins back.

When he gets back to the dorm, though, he can’t stop thinking about what Dumbledore said, that Malfoy was bothered because he thought what he wanted wasn’t what he saw. That seems weird to him, because Harry has always known what he wanted—a family, a real family, with people who love him—and so the idea of not knowing what you want doesn’t really make sense to him. But Draco can be kind of weird sometimes, and maybe if you have everything you don’t know what you want, so he guesses that makes sense.

He can’t say anything that night because Draco’s asleep and Harry doesn’t want to wake him because then he’ll get mad, so instead Harry curls up and closes his eyes and makes himself fall asleep.

He’s exhausted in the morning, pain pulsing across his temples, but he’s used to being tired and so he knows how to deal with it. Finally, at the end of lunch, after Draco spends a while loudly talking about how his father will bring him to the Wizengamot over the summer so that he’ll be prepared for when he petitions a spot, Harry grabs Draco’s arm and asks, “Can I talk to you?”

Draco sends him a cool, imperious look, the type of look that he usually uses on Ron or Neville or one of the Hufflepuffs, then nods. “If you insist.”

Harry’s not really sure what to make of that look, but there’s not much he can do, so he just waits for Draco to grab his stuff and then walks out with him to one of the courtyards. It’s cold out, so Harry jams his hands in his pockets. Draco doesn’t seem bothered by it, looking totally collected, like some untouchable lord. Harry hasn’t really seem him like that before, at least not with him.

“What do you need?”

Harry closes his hand around his wand because he needs the comfort of it. “Why are you—why are you mad at me?”

Draco’s lips thin. “I’m not mad at you.”

“When why are you acting like this? Why are you ignoring me and talking to me like this? I know—Dumbledore said whatever you saw bothered you, and I’m sorry if you’re mad that I brought you to see it, but you _wanted_ to, so I don’t get why you’re mad at me.”

Draco stares at him for a minute, and Harry can’t read what’s on his face. “Dumbledore?”

“He showed up last night and told me not to go looking for the mirror again.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

That wasn’t the point. “I don’t know. But he said that whatever you had seen was different from what you thought you wanted, so I guess he had seen us.”

“Did he see what I saw?”

“I don’t _know_. But why are you mad at me? I thought we were friends.”

Something cool settles across Draco’s face. “I realized that I was allowing our friendship to subsume my own goals and desires. I have no desire to be estranged from you, but I must also focus on my own future.” He nods. “If you’ll excuse me.” And then he walks away.

Harry watches him go, totally baffled. He has no idea what just happened and no idea what to do to fix it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year!


	17. Chapter 17

Harry doesn’t have—much—time to worry about Draco’s new coldness, because the Quidditch season starts up again and Flint has them practicing until practically the middle of the night. They all get special exceptions to not have to be in by curfew on practice days, though Harry’s pretty sure Snape only gave him one reluctantly.

And Harry loves the practice, but he’s cold all the time, and he doesn’t understand how the rest of them don’t spend all of their time shaking on their brooms. His new gloves help a bit, so he can still catch the snitch, but he feels like he’s trembling so hard he’s going to fall off.

And then, on one particularly blustery day in early February, he does fall off his broom, and he’s low enough to the ground that he just has the wind knocked out of him instead of him actually breaking anything, so he just lays there on the ground, limbs splayed, trying to breathe through the overwhelming cold.

Higgs flies down at him, dismounting before his broom stops moving so he can run the last couple feet to Harry.

He crouches down next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder when Harry struggles to sit up. “You okay? Did you hurt yourself?”

Harry shakes his head. “No, I’m fine.” He looks at his hands, which are trembling uncontrollably. “Cold. I was having trouble holding on.”

Higgs stares at him for a moment, and then his eyes widen. “You’ve been playing all this time without Warming Charms?” Harry shrugs. Warming Charms. He should remember those. They’re usually just permanently set in the Slytherin dungeon, so he forgets that they can actually _be_ set. Higgs sighs, pulling out his wand and tapping Harry in the shoulder, muttering, “ _Callesco_.”

Warmth run through Harry, and he sags a little as everything relaxes all at once. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.” Higgs puts his wand away. “If you don’t know how to do something, Potter, ask. Professor Snape—and the rest of the wizarding world—will have our heads if you die of hypothermia during practice.”

“I know how to do a Warming Charm,” Harry mutters. “I just—”

“Didn’t.” Higgs stands, offering Harry a hand to lever him up. Harry stands, brushing the grass off of his clothes. “Flint is ready to end practice anyway. You sure you don’t need Madam Pomfrey?”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure.” Higgs slings a casual arm over his shoulder, and miracle of miracles, Harry doesn’t flinch, and not even because he restrains himself. “So you might not have heard, but Professor Snape’s going to be reffing the next match. Just to make sure nobody tries to kill you like they did last time.”

“You really think someone was trying to kill me?”

Higgs scoffs. “Someone cursed your broom and tried to make you fall off fifty feet up.”

“What if they were aiming for someone else?”

“Then he’s going to make sure they don’t try to kill that person, instead.”

“Isn’t that…cheating or something, having our Head of House ref the game?”

“So? It’s cheating for our side.”

“That just seems wrong.”

Flint lands next to them, frowning at Harry. “What seems wrong?”

“Our little House Gryffindor was just saying that he doesn’t want Snape reffing the next game in case he rules in our favor.”

Harry tries and fails to pull away, scowling at both of them. “I’m not a Gryffindor.”

“Sure, sure.” Higgs ruffles his hair. “Just concerned with fairness and equality and giving the other side a chance to win.”

“Sounds more like a Hufflepuff to me,” Flint says.

Harry shoves at Higgs, who just ruffles his hair again. “Don’t worry, Potter, we’ll teach you better. First things first, remember that you need to use every advantage that you have to win, even if that includes what you might think of as cheating.”

“But if you cheat, people won’t like you.”

“Then don’t get caught.”

But Harry always gets caught, even when it’s not his fault or when he didn’t even do anything. “But if I do—”

“There is another way you can play it—”

“Later,” Flint says, shoving Harry’s broom at him. Harry grabs it out of self-defense so he doesn’t get beamed in the head. “It’s too bloody cold out. You can teach Potter how to be a good Slytherin all you want once we get inside. And get him checked out by Pomfrey.”

“I’m fine.”

Flint scowls at him. “It’s her or Snape, and for whatever reason you seem to not get along with Snape. That’s not my rule—you fall off your broom, you get checked out. Snape’s orders.” They start heading towards the castle on mutual unspoken agreement of it being too cold to stand still even with Warming Charms. “One thing Slytherins have a habit of doing is hiding when they get hurt. So rules are, you do something that could get you hurt, someone has to make sure you aren’t hurt.”

Harry resists the urge to roll his eyes. That’s stupid. People get hurt sometimes, and it’s not like they need adults to make sure that they’re fine or look after them. Adults usually just make it worse. And he doesn’t to go to Snape, but he really doesn’t want Madam Pomfrey fussing over him, and he knows Snape won’t fuss over him, so he says, “I’ll go to Snape.”

Higgs actually stops next to him, until one of the other team members shoves him until he stumbles forward and almost pitches into Harry. “You hate Snape, though.”

“Yeah, but he won’t fuss over me.”

Higgs sighs. “Fine, I’ll take you.”

\--

Snape looks less than pleased to see them.

Not that he ever looks pleased to see Harry, and Harry can’t really blame him, especially because it’s pretty late and he looks like he was in the middle of grading papers.

“What has Potter done this time?”

Higgs shuts the door to the office behind him, saying, “He fell off him broom, and he’s been training without Warming Charms on this whole time.” Harry shoots Higgs a baleful look, because it’s not like he needed to bring that other part up, but Higgs ignores him.

Snape doesn’t even put his quill down, making another mark on the paper in front of him as he asks, “And why are you not bothering Madam Pomfrey with this?”

“He picked you.”

Now Snape actually puts the quill down, looking at them. “Very well. Potter, sit. Mr. Higgs, you can leave.”

Higgs leans back against the door he closed. “I think I’ll stay, sir.”

Snape’s eyes widen a little. “Do you not trust me with your classmate’s safety?”

“I do, sir, but Harry’d prefer I stay.”

Harry hunches his shoulders. He doesn’t want Higgs to get in trouble for him, and it’s fine if he’s alone with Snape. He doesn’t think Snape would hurt him, at least not too badly, especially because people know where he’s been. Though when people hurt him, like Uncle Vernon or Dudley, it tends to heal faster, not like when he just gets hurt. “It’s fine.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.” Higgs looks at Snape. “Will you accept this for my own peace of mind, sir?”

Snape’s lips thin, but then he nods sharply and focuses back on Harry. “ _Sit,_ Mr. Potter, so we can get on with this.”

Harry sits, and Snape stands and walks around to stand in front of him. He pulls out his wand, swooping it in front of him. Something flares gold, and Snape’s eyes narrow. “Your respiratory system is fine, though I would recommend using a Warming Charm from now on. You have bruises on your side, knee, and the entire side of your lower leg.”

Higgs pushes off from the door. “You shouldn’t have gotten those last bruises from falling. You didn’t fall that far.”

“What are they from?” Snape demands.

Harry shrugs. “Finnegan and Thomas, mostly. In Gryffindor.” He shrugs again. “The bruises are mostly gone. I’m fine then, right? If it’s just some bruises? I mean, nothing’s broken.”

“You still have the bruise cream from the beginning of the year?”

Harry has to think about that for a minute; he’s pretty sure he shoved it in his trunk at some point with the idea of saving it to bring it back to the Dursleys to use during the summer and forgot about it. “Yeah. Sir.”

“Is there some reason you are not using it?” Harry shrugs. “I expect an actual answer, Mr. Potter, unless you see yourself as above such things.”

Harry shakes his head. “I just…forgot. It’s not that big a deal, sir.”

“You have the eyes of the wizarding world on you, or will if something happens. And, as a member of my House, I am responsible for you irrespective of my own wishes. My own reputation, unfortunately, now hinges in part on your health. Both of you, you’re dismissed.”

Harry stands, hurrying out of the room as Higgs opens the door for him. Higgs hesitates, then follows him out.

Harry waits until they’ve turned the corner to a different hallway before demanding, “Why did you tell him about the Warming Charm thing?”

Higgs pins him against the wall with one hand against his shoulder, glaring at him. “Why didn’t you tell him—or any of us—that Finnegan and Thomas have been going after you?”

Harry tries to shove him away, but he’s too strong. “Because it doesn’t matter. People do that. Draco goes after people all the time, even though I keep telling him not to. He keeps hexing Hufflepuffs when I’m not around.”

“Draco isn’t the point here, and you know it.”

“What do you want from me?”

“For you to accept that you need help would be nice.”

“Why do you care?”

Higgs hesitates, then pulls away, backing up to flop back against the other wall. “We’re loyal to each other. Slytherins. Nobody else is going to be, so we do it for each other. Part of that means that we look out for each other. I don’t like seeing people I’m supposed to be looking out for getting hurt, especially when I find out it’s been happening for a while and even though we could have done something about it, we didn’t know to stop it.”

“I don’t want you to start hexing them or anything.”

“Rest assured, we’ll be more subtle than that.”

“I don’t want you to do _anything_ to them.”

“It’s not your decision.” Higgs straightens, seeming to pull himself together. “You may be ostensibly higher than me, but Slytherin has its traditions, and one of those is stopping people from other Houses from attacking our Housemates. Come on, Potter. It’s past your bedtime.”

\--

Nobody says anything about Finnegan and Thomas going after him—and it really hadn’t been that big a deal, just some tripping and shoving in hallways and the fact that they always throw things into his potions during class—which is good because Harry really doesn’t want to have to deal with Draco or anyone else teasing him for being a wimp.

They do stop, though, mostly, which is nice.

But Harry doesn’t like this idea that they’re supposed to look after him or anything like that. He doesn’t need it. He can take care of himself, and when people get involved it always makes things worse, like that teacher who noticed a bruise that didn’t heal fast enough and tried to get involved, and then he was stuck in the cupboard for the whole weekend with no food or water or anything.

They get through the game with Snape reffing without too much happening, and they win without Snape cheating for them. Even Dumbledore is there watching, though, so maybe that’s why.

He sees Snape head into the forest after the game, but then Higgs distracts him and then Ron and Hermione run up and Hermione gives him a hug and Ron congratulates him even though he hates it when Slytherin wins—but it was a win over Ravenclaw, so Ron doesn’t mind it as much—and Harry forgets about Snape.

Afterwards, during class for the next few weeks, Quirrell looks even more scared than usual, which is something Harry hadn’t thought was possible before. He’s not really sure what did it, whether he got some bad news or just saw his own shadow or something. Harry doesn’t really care, though, other than that he generally doesn’t like seeing people scared. But Quirrell is honestly not that much worse a teacher like this than before, so it’s not like they’re missing much.

Near to the end of March, Prefect Caster pulls him in to that empty classroom meet with her again. She looks tired, the makeup smeared around one of her eyes like she’s been rubbing it.

“What do you need me for?” he asks when she just sits there for a minute yawning.

“Sorry,” she says, rubbing the eye and smearing the makeup a little more. He’s not really sure why she’s wearing it, because he thinks she looks fine without it, but it must be some older person thing. He’s not sure he’ll ever understand adults. “We’re not that close to the end of the year—well, we’re getting closer—but given that my NEWTs are coming up and I’m…not sleeping, I figured I’d tell you this before I forgot. The plan is still for you to petition the seat to me, yes?”

Harry nods. “Yeah. Or however I give you a seat.”

“Okay.” She closes her eyes for a second, like she’s blinking and then just forgets to open them back up for a little too long. “I’ve been looking up how to do that—the language is both specific and formal, and I can’t ask other Slytherins because we should try to keep this relatively on the down-low until it’s settled. I’m assuming you haven’t told anyone, given that I haven’t heard Malfoy crowing about it.”

“I haven’t told anyone.” He hadn’t really thought about telling people.

“Good. As I was saying, I need to find specifically how to word. The Wizengamot is old-fashioned and inconvenient and tries to be difficult. And succeeds. Once I find it, I’ll have you write it up and sign it, and then you can add your magical signature and we’ll be fine.”

“My magical signature?”

“I’ll show you when it’s time.” She waves a hand at him. “I’m not awake enough to do that right now. It’s not that hard, but just—” She waves the hand again. “Anyway. Here’s what I want you to do for me: write up a list of what you care about, what you want me to focus on. Once I know what I’ll be voting on, I’ll let you know, and you can tell me how to vote. This’ll probably be once every couple weeks, maybe more frequently if something major happens. There will be some things—probably a lot of things—that you don’t care about. You can let me know what you want me to abstain on, as well as what you’ll let me use my discretion for. Does that all make sense?”

Harry nods. “How should I figure out what I care about?”

“I can talk through anything you want with you, give you my opinion. In cases where we differ—and those will certainly happen—I will try to convince you to see my way, though of course your opinion will ultimately be the one that matters.”

“Why?”

She smiles a little. “Because it will be your seat, snakelet. I will just be voting as your proxy, until you are old enough to make the vote yourself. That’s what you’re giving me.”

Harry frowns. “I still don’t get why you don’t want more.”

“Because there is nothing more I can get, not right now, not with what I have and what I want. Don’t worry, snakelet, you’re giving me more than I was expecting and more than you know.” She stands, stretching. “Get me that whenever you get a chance—I won’t be able to look at it any time soon anyway. And ask me for help if you need it, or if you have any questions.”

“What if I think of anything else that I want you to vote on?”

“You can owl me. You have an owl, right?”

Harry nods. He’s gone to see Hedwig a few times, and she seems happy. “Yeah.”

“Then if you think of anything else, you can owl me, even if I haven’t owled you first. I will be, for all intents and purposes, your employee. I will be paid by the Wizengamot, but on your orders and at your pleasure.”

Harry feels kind of uncomfortable with that, because she’s so much older and smarter and actually know about stuff, but he likes the idea of helping people, too, and it’s not like he can do it on his own. “Okay.”

She walks forward to ruffle his hair. “I’m about to fall asleep here, and these are not particularly comfortable chairs. I’m sure I’ll think of something else, so I’ll tell you about it then, and in the meantime, write up the thing.” She waves a hand at him. “The thing I told you to write up. Write it up.”

He nods. “Will do.”

She grins at him, a little looser than usual. “You’re a good kid, snakelet. Adorable, too. Like a little…small person. You need to gain some weight. Eat more. I’m going to feed you. Just not right now. After my NEWTs. I’ll feed everyone after my NEWTs.” And then she wanders out of the room.

Harry stares after her for a moment, a little bemused, then follows her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will get to Philosopher's Stone stuff soon, I promise. Like next chapter, soon. I promise.
> 
> Also Finnegan/Thomas stuff was mentioned in chapter 5 but Harry, who's used to worse bullying, doesn't really think of it as being serious or out of the ordinary which is why it isn't mentioned more.


	18. Chapter 18

It is, shamefully, weeks later when Harry remembers the dog in the room, and he goes back there one weekend with three pieces of raw meat he asked a confused Zonky for. The dog is happy to have the meat, from what Harry can tell, the friendliest head licking Harry’s hand for almost fifteen minutes after finishing scarfing down the meat. Harry scratches him under the chin, then scratches the other two heads, too, when they push in.

“Sorry for not coming earlier,” Harry tells them. “I got distracted by Quidditch. Have you ever seen Quidditch? You get to fly around, and my job is to catch the snitch. And I’m _good_ at it. I’m never the best at anything, except maybe getting beaten up or being picked last, but I’m really good at it. But I should have stopped by earlier, because I said I would, and because you’re probably lonely. Unless other people visit you. I hope other people visit you. Maybe Hagrid visits you. Hagrid said that he liked animals.”

Harry jumps to his feet, suddenly thinking of something. “Maybe I can ask Hagrid if you can get to go outside sometimes. He might let you.” Harry looks around. “Though I’m not sure how they would get you out of here. But there’s magic, so they could probably figure it out. I bet magic can do it.” The friendliest head nudges him, and he scratches behind their ears. “I’m going to go see Hagrid now. I’m not doing it to leave you alone, I just want to see if you can get to go outside.”

He gets outside without anyone stopping him—though that’s mostly because Draco’s off studying or terrorizing Hufflepuffs and Hermione is busy trying to convince Ron to study—and Hagrid’s hut is easy to find, so he gets out there pretty quickly.

Only to be greeted by a gruff, “Who’s out there?”

“It’s Harry. Uh, Harry Potter.”

There’s a brief pause, and then Hagrid yanks the door open, looking around furtively. He’s drenched in sweat. “Harry? What’re ya here for?”

Harry shrugs. “I wanted to ask you something. But, uh, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Come in, come in.” He steps back, and Harry heads into his hut. Hagrid shuts the door behind him.

The hut is blisteringly hot, and Harry feels himself start to sweat immediately under his robes. The reason why isn’t immediately clear; it’s not that cold out anymore, and there’s no reason to have a fire going in the middle of the day. But a fire there is, with a giant cauldron in it.

But then Hagrid steps in front of fire, blocking Harry’s view of it, and asks, “What can I do for you, Harry?”

“I’m not sure if you know, but there’s a giant dog in the castle, and it seems like it never gets to go outside, and I was just wondering if it could, you know…run around outside or something.”

Hagrid goes pale under the flush on his cheeks. “How do you know about Fluffy?”

Harry blinks at him. “Fluffy?”

“Yeah—he’s mine—bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub las’ year—I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the—”

“Yes?”

Hagrid shakes his head, bustling around to grab a teapot. “Now, don’t ask me any more,” he says gruffly. “That’s top secret, that is.”

“Is _that_ why you’re keeping him cooped up in that small room? To guard something? What is he guarding?”

Hagrid sets the teapot down with a little too much force. “Now, listen to me, yer meddlin’ in things that don’t concern yeh. It’s dangerous. You forget that dog, an’ you forget what it’s guardin’, that’s between Professor Dumbledore an’ Nicolas Flamel—” He shakes his head. “I shouldna said that.”

Harry wants to ask about that, but he knows it’ll make him shut down even more, so instead he asks, “What do you have in the fire?” He walks over to it, looking into the cauldron, and in it is what looks like a giant black egg. “Is this an _egg_? Why do you have an egg in the fire?” He has a sudden memory of Hagrid talking about wanting a dragon. “Is this a _dragon egg_?”

“Sure is,” Hagrid says. “I won it. Las’ night. I was down in the village havin’ a few drinks an’ got into a game o’ cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad to get rid of it, ter be honest. An’ see, well, I’ve bin doin’ some readin’.” He pulls a book out from under his pillow, showing it to Harry, and he looks pleased. “Got this outta the library— _Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit_ —it’s a bit outta date, o’ course, but it’s all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, ‘cause their mothers breathe on ‘em, see, an’ when it hatches, feet it on a o’ bucket o’ brandy mixed with chicken blood every hour. An’ see here—how ter recognize diff’rent eggs—what I got there’s a Norwegian Ridgeback. They’re rare, them.”

He looks so excited Harry doesn’t want to say this, but at the same time, “Hagrid, you live in a _wooden house_.”

But Hagrid isn’t listening, and Harry is pretty sure he isn’t going to get anything else out of him, so he just heads out of the hut, sweat dripping down his forehead and the small of his back.

\--

Harry finds Ron and Hermione in the library—with Ron doodling on the edge of the paper and nodding vaguely as she explains something under her breath while glancing around every few seconds to make sure Madam Pince isn’t around. Harry drops down next to them and hisses, “Hagrid has a dragon egg.”

Hermione actually stops talking, and Ron drops his quill on his paper, ink blooming out from it. Hermione is the one who figures out what to say first, which is, “He lives in a wooden house.”

“I know. What do we do?”

Ron frowns, picking up his quill to tap it on the paper, leaving little blots of ink. “It’s an egg? You’re sure? It isn’t hatched yet?”

Harry nods. “I was just there, and it was an egg. He had it on the fire.”

“Why were you there?”

“I—” Harry shakes his head. “I’ll tell you in a moment. First we need to figure out what to do with the dragon. Because Hagrid can’t just _keep_ a dragon, can he?”

Ron is shaking his head before Harry is even done talking. “No, he can’t. It’s illegal, and dragons get really big. I’ll—my brother Charlie, he works with dragons in Romania, I’ll owl him, see if he can come get the dragon. Hopefully before it hatches. Charlie has talked about how dangerous dragons can be, even baby ones.”

He hops up, only to be pulled back down by Hermione, who demands, “Now why were you talking to Hagrid?”

“There’s, uh—there’s a dog in a room in the castle, and it never seems to get to go outside, and I know Hagrid likes animals, so I wanted to see if he would let the dog go outside.”

“A _dog_ —”

Madam Pince appears out of nowhere to glare at them, and they hurry out of the library before she can give them detention. Harry has heard that her detentions involve copying down hundreds of lines about how to treat books properly. Or some she passes off to Filch, and apparently those are even worse.

Once they’re out of the library, Harry says, “C’mon, I’ll show you. I should probably get some steaks to bring, but it should be okay.”

“Steaks?” Ron stares at him. “How big _is_ this dog?”

“Er.” Harry thinks about it for a second. “Each of its heads is about the size of…me.”

Ron gapes at him. “How many heads does it _have_?”

“Three.”

Ron makes a choking noise. “Maybe let’s not…”

Hermione is staring at him too. “Where is this dog? It’s in the castle, you said?” When Harry describes where it is, her eyes go really wide, and then she says, “But that’s in the restricted section.”

“No, it can’t be. That’s on the third floor, and I know I went up more flights of stairs than that.”

She presses her hand to her head. “Harry. You live in the dungeon.”

Oh. Harry should have thought of that, except he hadn’t been thinking about it that way. He shrugs. “Either way, I think it’s guarding something, something that has to do with someone named Nicolas Flamel.”

Hermione frowns. “Who?”

Harry shakes his head. “I was hoping you would know. Ron?”

Ron shakes his head too. “I don’t know. The name is a little familiar, but I’m not—” He holds his hands out. “It’s not the sort of thing I care about.”

“He’s an alchemist.”

Harry spins around to see Draco leaning up against a wall, arms crossed. He pointedly ignores Hermione and Ron, smirking at Harry instead. Harry frowns at him. “What?”

“Nicolas Flamel—he’s an alchemist. I know why you don’t know this, Granger, but I’m surprised at you, Weasley. Unless your family is too poor to afford sweets, too, along with new robes and some dignity.”

Harry takes a step in between Ron and Draco, mostly so Ron doesn’t punch Draco in the face. “Don’t talk about Ron’s family like that.”

Draco gives a bored sigh. “Fine.”

“So how do you know who Flamel is?” Hermione demands.

“He’s on the Dumbledore card,” Draco drawls. “He worked with Dumbledore on dragon blood and he created the Philosopher’s Stone. Don’t you _read_?”

Hermione flushes red, and Harry has to fight the urge to roll his eyes. “I thought you weren’t talking to me anymore.”

“Of course I’m still talking to you. And besides, I was bored.” Harry isn’t really sure what to say, and Draco doesn’t seem to care, because he rolls his eyes and says, “You’re _welcome_ , Potter. And stop gaping, Weasley, it makes you look like a toad that’s caught fire.” He turns, robes swirling around his ankles like he’s a mini-Snape, and stalks away.

Harry turns to blink at Ron and Hermione, both of whom look as surprised as he feels. “I don’t know what just happened,” Harry says after a second. “He hasn’t been talking to me—not like that—in months.”

Hermione frowns. “Maybe he’s trying to get close to you. I mean, that was practically pleasant, for Malfoy. To me, at least.” Her frown deepens. “I’ll look into the Philosopher’s Stone, see what I can find.” She looks at Harry. “You shouldn’t go back to see the dog, if it’s in the out-of-bounds wing.”

“But if they’re there, nobody will see them. And they’re all cramped alone in a tiny room.” Harry sends Hermione a pleading look. “I can’t just leave them alone there with nobody to visit them if they can’t go outside. That’s mean.”

Hermione bites her lip, and Ron puts in, “It’s a giant dog, mate. What if it bites you?”

Harry shrugs. “I’ve been fine so far.” He’s going to go, even if they think he shouldn’t. He won’t tell them that, but he’s not just going to leave the dog alone.

“I need to go research this,” Hermione says a bit urgently. And then, with despair, she adds, “And I have to finish my _homework_.”

\--

Harry almost gets punched in the face walking into the common room (password _auctoritas_ ), saved only by a firm hand pulling him out of the way just as a fist goes flying by his face. He ducks instinctively, free hand going up to his face, and he’s pulled even further out of the way, a voice saying in his ear, “You’re okay.”

Harry looks up to see Max holding on to his wrist, an irritated look on their face. “What’s going on?”

They roll their eyes at the two older students who have apparently given up on their wands to have a fist fight in the middle of the common room. Most of the rest of the room is watching, though nobody is chanting them on like happened back in Surrey, and a few people seem totally apathetic to the whole thing. “One of them kissed the other one’s girlfriend or something similarly absurd.” Their lips thin. “This isn’t how private matters should be dealt with, not in our House. You find some corner and you handle it between the two of you, and nobody else needs to get involved. This is just messy.”

Harry pries wide eyes off of the fight to look at Max. “What if someone gets hurt, if nobody gets involved?”

“If they get hurt badly enough, Professor Snape gets involved, and nobody wants that.”

That makes sense to Harry. It would look bad for Snape if he didn’t discipline his students for fighting that they couldn’t hide. “How do you know this isn’t a public matter, then? If it’s so…public?”

Max shakes their head. “No, public ones are always dominance plays. Public ones are about seeing who will support you, not about who’s stronger.” Both of them wince when the taller boy lands a particularly hard punch on the other one’s jaw. “Someone tried to challenge a prefect my first year. He thought he had enough allies to still be counted higher.” They shake their head. “The House was a mess. It ended up with three seventh-years declared unspoken for a week.”

Harry frowns at them. “What do you mean?”

“I means nobody was allowed to talk to them for a week.” The taller fourth year finally shoves the shorter one against a wall and stalks out, and the tension runs out of the room a little. People go back to whatever they were doing before. It’s all a bit surreal to Harry.

“What does that—”

“It’s the ultimate dominance show. Only a top person can declare someone unspoken, because if you’re not high enough people won’t listen to you. And having it happen to you means that everyone thinks you’re lower than the person who declared you unspoken, and that you’re the bottom, especially for that time, because nobody will listen to you if they won’t talk to you.” Without seeming to have any thought in between, Max pulls a book from their robes and opens it, wandering off.

Harry blinks after them—him, he thinks, when Max walks in the direction of the boys dorms. That was…weird. Illuminating, but weird.

Though once he thinks about it, he thinks Hermione is a bit like that, too. She’ll get really into explanations, but she’ll also get really distracted by books and not respond when people are talking to her because she’s so interested in what she’s reading. Harry likes books, too, likes learning, but he can’t get that engrossed because he can’t just ignore it when someone walks up to him.

He’s not sure what he thinks of Max, but he appreciates that they didn’t let him get punched in the face, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry that took so long--I spent a while most of the way into it and just couldn't figure out how to finish it. I legit wrote most of a chapter of book 5 and a few hundred words of book 4 to avoid working on it.


	19. Chapter 19

Ron gets an owl back from his brother a few days later saying that they’ll come get the dragon. Harry thinks that’s crazy, having a brother who is willing to drop everything and fly to a different country to get a dragon, but Ron doesn’t seem to think anything of it, so Harry doesn’t comment.

The problem, though, is that the day before Ron’s brother is arriving, the egg hatches, and they’re left with, instead of a giant shaking dragon egg, an actual, fire-breathing, bitey dragon. It almost bites Ron, and it’s only Harry dragging him out of the way that keeps Ron out of the Hospital Wing.

But Hagrid agrees to pack Norbert into a crate—with a stuffed creature that Harry knows probably won’t survive the night—and then goes out…somewhere the night they show up to take him. Harry thinks he’s going out to go drink, but he’s not going to ask.

Uncle Vernon would get drunk sometimes—not much, but sometimes, when things went badly at work—and things were particularly bad on those days. If Hagrid does that, he doesn’t want to know about it, or think about it.

Harry sneaks out with the Cloak on after everyone is asleep, checking the board for the password before heading out. Sometimes they change it at the middle of the night, and he doesn’t want to be caught out without it.

It’s a bit chilly out when he gets outside, and he sees Hermione and Ron huddling in their cloaks heading down to Hagrid’s. He makes sure to make some noise when he gets near them, but Ron still jumps when Harry puts a hand on his shoulder. “Bloody hell, Harry.”

Harry grins under the cloak before pulling it off and tossing it over one shoulder. “Sorry.”

\--

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Hermione asks, peering down at the crate with the small—but fire-breathing—dragon sitting on the floor of Hagrid’s hut. The crate shakes as though to agree with her sentiment.

“What do you want to do,” Ron asks, “leave it here? Where do you think Hagrid’s going to keep a fully-grown dragon, the Forbidden Forest? He’d have more like hiding a dragon in there.”

“I know,” Hermione says, giving him an irritated look. “But should we be doing this? We could still get a teacher—”

“And get Hagrid in trouble?” Harry points out. He wants to get the dragon moved and be done with it, not keep standing around here where anyone could peer in the windows and see them. “Come on, Hermione, let’s move it. Or Ron and I can get it if you don’t want to be involved.”

“Hey,” Ron protests, but Hermione just takes a deep breath, straightens out, and nods firmly.

“You’re right.” She bites her lip. “I think I know a lightening charm, but I’m not sure how well it works on living things, so maybe we shouldn’t risk it.”

“Why bother bringing it up?” Ron grouses, but quietly, and they all pick up the box together, Harry throwing the Cloak over them before they leave Hagrid’s hut. It’s slow going and awkward, trying to carry Norbert while all staying completely under the Cloak, but they manage it well enough, even if they have to take stairs like they never learned how to walk properly.

The Astronomy Tower is crowded with people when they get there; there’s a man Harry immediately thinks is Ron’s brother, along with a couple dozen other people, all of whom look somewhere between uncomfortable and excited.

The few nearest them swear when the three of them pull the Cloak off, and then Ron’s brother steps towards them. Ron’s face lights up at the sight of them. “Charlie! I thought you weren’t coming here.”

Charlie leans over and ruffles Ron’s hair, grinning when Ron half-heartedly pushes him away. “I wasn’t going to, but I figured I should visit my little brother and see what all the fuss is about.” He looks at Hermione and Harry, the latter of whom is busy folding the Cloak up to stuff it in a pocket. “Merlin, you really do know Potter.”

Ron scowls at him. “Did you think I was lying?”

“Last year Fred and George told me they had befriended the Giant Squid and that it gave them pirate gold whenever they visited it. I’ve learned to be wary when my brothers tell me things.” He ruffles Ron’s hair again, then crouches down in front of the crate when it rattles. “This the dragon, then?”

Hermione nods. “It’s a Norwegian Ridgeback.”

“Brilliant,” one of the other people says, and everyone’s eyes are on the dragon instead of Harry, which is just how Harry likes it. “A newly hatched Norwegian Ridgeback. Those are damn rare this far south.” She frowns at Harry and Hermione. “You know how your teacher got one?”

“He’s not our teacher,” Hermione tells her.

But Harry frowns at her, then at Ron. “Hagrid—how did Hagrid get an egg? Could he have bought it?”

Ron and Charlie shake their head at the same time. “There’s a ban on the sale of dragon eggs,” Charlie tells him. They’re too dangerous to raise outside of sanctuaries, and Britain hasn’t allowed them in decades.”

“You’d best tell your teacher—or whoever he is—not to accept any more dragons,” the woman from before says. She has a bit of an accent, but Harry can’t place it; she’s pretty, he thinks, even with the burn covering from the left side of her chin down into the collar of her robes. “The rules regarding creatures in your Forest are lax, but even they will not allow for a dragon.”

Harry nods. “We’ll tell him.”

“Good.” Charlie looks at the crowd of people milling around muttering to each other, all squished into the Astronomy Tower, then says, “Why don’t we head out now.” He frowns at Ron. “It’s good that you dealt with this, but I don’t want you getting in trouble, so you should go now. And don’t tell mum about this.”

Ron nods.

“Okay,” Charlie says, “let’s move out.”

\--

Harry, Ron, and Hermione head out of the Astronomy Tower a few minutes later, once the people finish getting Norbert rigged up in some sort of magic contraption that Harry assumes will keep him from escaping or falling or burning everyone to death.

They head to Gryffindor first, because it’s more or less between the Astronomy Tower and Slytherin, Ron snickering about everyone’s face when they came out from under the Cloak, and they’re a floor away when the swift clicks of shoes and brisk swish of cloth turn the corner, and Snape and Draco appear.

The three of them skitter to a stop, but it’s too late; Snape is already stalking towards them, Draco trailing behind him with a smirk on his face.

“Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Ms. Granger, care to tell me why you are out of bed at the middle of the night?”

Harry opens his mouth, but Hermione blurts out, “We were taking a walk.”

Snape actually stops and blinks at her, looking like he just heard her say they were dancing a jig with Fluffy. “After curfew?”

Hermione nods decisively. “Yes.” She glances at Harry, then says, “We wanted to do some extra studying, and I thought it would be more effective to talk it through instead of continuing to stare at the textbooks.”

Snape’s lip lifts in a sneer. “A likely story, Ms. Granger. Any defense from either of you?”

Harry hesitates, then shakes his head. Next to him, Ron is shaking his head back and forth frantically.

“That will be detention for all four of you,” Snape tells them, and the smirk drops off of Draco’s face. “And with Mr. Filch—I don’t plan to waste my time with you. Now to bed, all of you, or I’ll make it a week.”

Harry waits until they’re in the Common Room, Draco glaring at him the entire way there, to ask, “Why did you get detention, too?”

Draco’s scowl deepens, and he mutters, “Sabotage of a Housemate. Even though _you_ were doing something wrong, _I_ got in trouble for telling him because I wanted to get you in trouble.” He starts to stomp off towards the dorm, but stops when Harry grabs his arm. He turns to glare at Harry. “ _What_?”

“Why did you tell him?”

Draco’s lips thin, and he jerks away. Finally, he snaps, “You were ignoring me.”

Harry gapes at him. “You’ve barely talked to me in months, and you made it pretty clear you didn’t want to have much to do with me. So how was I ignoring you?”

“You’re running around and doing fun things with Weasley and _Granger_ , even when I told you something they didn’t know. And Granger is a muggleborn and Weasley is barely a pureblood, and I know more about wizarding society than either of them and I met you first but you went to _them_ instead.”

“So you got me in trouble.”

A flush alights high on Draco’s cheeks, making his face look even sharper. “You were ignoring me.”

Harry opens his mouth, but he knows nothing good will come out, so he just pushes past Draco and goes to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this took me two months to write (except I wrote almost all of it in the past week or so), and it's super short, but it's done. Hooray.


	20. Chapter 20

The next day the whole House seems to know that Draco has detention for sabotage of a Housemate and Harry has detention for sneaking out after curfew with some Gryffindors. Normally, from what Harry can tell, Draco would be somewhat ostracized for what he did, but the fact that Harry was out with Gryffindors lessens that a bit.

All in all, it means that everyone is a little bit less comfortable with both of them. Crabbe and Goyle side with Draco, while after a bit of hesitation the Quidditch team sides with Harry. Mostly, people just ignore it.

From what Harry can tell, Slytherins getting detentions from Snape is hugely rare, because he prefers to handle things internally. Harry seems to be a special case, though, and so people don’t question it. Which is frustrating, but he’s also glad that people aren’t questioning him now.

Two days later, a note appears on Harry’s plate, reading:

_Your detention will take place at seven o’clock tonight. Meet Mr. Filch in the Entrance Hall. –SS_

From across the table, he sees Draco get a note as well, and wonders if they’ll be in detention together.

When he heads from dinner to the Entrance Hall, Hermione and Ron are already waiting there, and they smile at him when he joins them. “You’re with us, too? I was afraid Filch was going to have us scrubbing the hall with our tongue or something.”

“Me being with you doesn’t mean that isn’t still possible.”

“I assure you,” Draco says from behind him, in his coldest poshest voice, “ _I_ would object being forced to do something so demeaning.”

Harry rolls his eyes at Ron and Hermione before turning to look at Draco. “You have detention with us, too?”

“Of course I do. Professor Snape would hardly bother to set us two different detentions.”

“I would have thought he would assign you detention with him, considering that he likes you so much.”

Draco’s cheekbones look like they sharpen as his face flushes a pale pink. “Professor Snape doesn’t waste his time on detentions for something like this.”

“Well, well, well,” Filch says, appearing from one of the side doors. “Follow me, then, stop wasting time here.” He brandishes a lit lamp, striding forcefully out of the Entrance Hall. Mrs. Norris trains behind him, yowling loudly. “I bet you’ll think twice about breaking a school rule again, won’t you, eh? Oh yes…hard work and pain are the best teachers if you ask me…. It’s just a pity they let the old punishments die out…hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days, I’ve got the chains still in my office, keep ‘em well-oiled in case they’re ever needed…. Right, off we go, and don’t think about running off, now, it’ll be worse for you if you do.”

They head down across the grounds. Harry’s not sure what they’re going to have to do, but if Filch—who wants to string them up by their wrists—sounds this excited, it must be terrible. Maybe they’ll be beaten. Harry thinks he could probably take that, but he doesn’t think Ron or Hermione or Draco could. Maybe if he makes Filch mad enough he’ll only do it to him and not to the others. Because he’s mad at Draco, but he’s not _that_ mad at Draco.

But instead, they’re heading towards Hagrid’s hut, and they hear, “Is that you, Filch? Hurry up, I want to get started.”

Relief fills him. Hagrid wouldn’t do that, he doesn’t think. For his size, Hagrid is surprisingly gentle, and kind.

Filch must see that relief, because with a sneer Filch says, “I suppose you think you’ll be enjoying yourself with that oaf. Well, think again, boy—it’s into the Forest you’re going, and I’m much mistaken if you’ll all come out in one piece.”

“The Forest?” Draco gasps, and he sounds genuinely terrified. “We can’t go in there at night. There are all sorts of things in there. My father would never allow this.”

Hagrid strides out of the dark towards them, Fang just behind him. He has a large crossbow held casually in one hand, pointed down at the ground, with a quiver of arrows hanging over his shoulder. “About time, I’ve been waiting for you. All right there, Harry, Ron, Hermione?”

“I wouldn’t be too friendly with them. They’re here to be punished, after all. I’ll be back at midnight.” He turns and heads back towards the castle until he’s just a lamp bobbing in the distance.

“I’m not going into that Forest,” Draco says sharply.

“Ye are if ye want to stay at Hogwarts,” Hagrid says. Draco looks like he still wants to argue, so Harry grabs his wrist; Draco doesn’t shake him off. “Now c’mon. This is what we’re going to be doing, and it’s dangerous, so y’gotta listen closely.” He leads them over towards the edge of the Forest and points at something silvery and shining on the ground. “That right there, that’s unicorn blood. This is the second time this week I’ve found it; one of them is hurt, badly. We need to find it.”

“And what if whatever is hurting it finds us?” Draco asks faintly.

“There’s nothing in the Forest that will hurt you if you’re with me or Fang and you keep to the path. Harry, go with Draco and Fang. If anyone finds the unicorn, send up green sparks, and if you’re in trouble, send up red. Ready?”

Harry starts to nod, then stops when Ron says, “Hagrid, before we go—when Charlie took the dragon, when they took Norbert, they said to ask you where you got it from. Because you shouldn’t be able to get a dragon in Britain, not from anyone.”

“I got it from a bloke in the pub, won it playing cards.”

“What did he look like, do you know?”

“Dunno,” Hagrid says, “he wouldn’t take his cloak off, though that’s not too unusual here. All sorts of funny folks down in the Hog’s Head, and if he was a dragon dealer he might not’a wanted anyone to see his face. Was dead interested in what I do, though, once I said I was gamekeeper. Told him about the sorts of creatures I’ve looked after, said after Fluffy, a dragon would be easy. All you gotta do is—” He blinks at them like he just realized they were still there, then says, “Never mind that, will you. We’ve got work to do.”

\--

Harry wakes to someone shaking his shoulder, and the pain in his head gives a particularly nasty throb before subsiding. He opens his eyes to squint at the face over him; he thinks it’s Draco from the hair. He doesn’t know where his glasses are.

“Harry,” the face says urgently, and that indeed is Draco. He presses glasses into Harry’s hand, and Harry jams the up on his face. They’re going to need more sellotape again; they’re crooked on his face. They must have broken when they fell. Damn. “Harry, are you okay?”

Harry nods, pushing himself up on his hands. He’s against a bed of roots, it feels like. Abruptly, he remembers what had happened. “Is he gone? The—whoever that was, with the unicorn? Whatever it was?”

Draco hesitates, then nods. “It sounded like a centaur was coming, and he ran away. I sent up sparks, so Hagrid should be coming. I knew they shouldn’t have sent us into the bloody Dark Forest. I _will_ be telling my father about this. Sending children after whatever is killing unicorns—whatever is _eating_ them—is insanity.”

Harry shrugs, climbing to his feet. “It’s detention.”

“Detention isn’t supposed to _kill_ you. You should contact your muggles, too, let them know what kind of ridiculous and difficult tasks we’re being set.”

Laughing, Harry brushes the dirt from his robe. Draco is between him and the unicorn, and he’s glad for that. He doesn’t want to look at it again. Something so pure, lying there, dead, killed by something so horrible. “The Dursleys would probably cheer if I told them what we were doing. They’d probably advocate for Filch’s method.”

Draco gapes at him. “But they’re your family.”

Harry opens his mouth, but it’s not worth arguing about, so instead he just shakes his head and says, “Who do you think that was? Or what?”

Draco opens his mouth, then shuts it with a snap when Hagrid appears out of the forest, followed by Ron and Hermione, who are jogging behind him. He spies Harry and Draco first, and then the unicorn, and he swears quietly.

“Did ye see who did it?” He asks, heading over to the unicorn, arrow notched in his crossbow.

“He was cloaked,” Harry says, trying to smile at Ron when he walks over next to him. “I think it was a man. I guess I don’t know. They were drinking the blood.”

“Drinking it?” Hagrid asks sharply, turning to look at him. “Ye’re sure he was drinking it?”

Harry nods.

“’tis a terrible thing,” Hagrid says, “to drink the blood of a unicorn. Ye’d only do it if ye were almost dead anyway, because it leaves ye with a half-life, from the moment it touches yer lips.” He shakes his head. “Ye’d better head back to the castle now.”

“What do you think is going on?” Ron asks as they start their trudge back up towards the castle. It’s late, definitely past curfew, and Harry hopes they’re not going to get in trouble. They shouldn’t, because it’s not their fault they’re out this late, but Filch would probably love to punish them for it anyway.

Draco gives a derisive snort from on the other side of Harry. “It’s not a coincidence, obviously. Someone is drinking unicorn blood at the same time some’s asking how to get past one of the protections to the Philosopher’s Stone—they’re the same person, clearly.”

Ron scowls at him. “What do those have to do with each other?”

Hermione is the one who answers, saying, “Unicorn preserves and prolongs life. Someone must be dying, or near death, and they’re seeking life. Unicorn blood will save them from death, and the Philosopher’s Stone will give them immortality.”

“So whoever’s doing this—”

“Is evil,” Draco says quietly. “Nobody else would drink unicorn blood.”

“You would know,” Ron sneers at him.

Harry rubs at his forehead, which is back to prickling with little shards of pain, like pieces of glass being rolled across his skin. Sharper than that time Dudley dragged him across gravel. “Can you stop, both of you? Draco’s not the one killing unicorns.”

“Yeah, Weasley.”

Harry presses harder against his forehead. “You, too, Draco. Don’t we have more important things to worry about than you bickering? Like whoever is apparently trying to make themselves immortal?”

“We need to tell an adult,” Hermione says, and Harry is about to tell her how ridiculous that is when Draco of all people nods.

“I hate to agree with Granger,” Draco says, “but an adult has to be informed. We are not qualified to handle a Dark Lord trying to steal something to become immortal. We should go tell Professor Snape.”

Ron blanches. “Snape? He could be involved, for all we know. No, if we’re going to tell anyone, it should be Dumbledore.”

Draco sneers at him. “My father says he’s a hack.”

“I don’t care what your father says, and Dumbledore’s the only man You-Know-Who ever feared.”

Draco looks at Harry at that, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, Harry says, “I don’t know about you, but I have no idea how to actually find Dumbledore. Do you know where is office is?”

Everyone looks at Hermione, who hesitates then says, “According to  _Hogwarts: A History_ , the entrance to the Headmaster’s office adjusts to suit the needs and will of the Headmaster.”

“So you don’t know.”

Hermione glares at Draco. “Do you?” When it’s clear he’s not going to answer, she says, “Professor McGonagall knows, I’m sure.”

“If we’re telling her, why don’t we just tell Professor Snape?”

“Because at least we know McGonagall’s not the one trying to get the Stone in the first place.”

“We have no reason to think Snape is, either.”

“Other than that he’s a foul git who’s clearly had it out for Harry since he got here? And anyway, he’s one of  _you_  lot.”

Harry flinches at that. “Ron—”

Ron glances at him, looking vaguely apologetic. “Not you, you’re okay. But you have to see how foul some of the Slytherins are. Have you seen how Snape goes after Neville? Or how Malfoy does?”

Harry hates when he does that, but, “Finnegan and Thomas did the same thing to me.” Ron opens his mouth to keep arguing, so Harry shakes his head, saying, “It doesn’t  _matter_ , this is all just wasting time. Let’s just tell McGonagall. At least she’s closer.”

Draco opens his mouth to argue, then closes it with a huff when Harry glares at him. Finally, he mutters, “Fine.”

\--

Finding Professor McGongall turns out to be easier than expected, because they stumble upon her ten feet into the castle; she has a light glowing from the tip of her wand and seems to be patrolling the castle halls. Which means it’s definitely after curfew.

As soon as she spots then, she stops, one hand braced on her hip; Harry hears Hermione let out a small noise. Professor McGonagall demands, “What are the four of you doing out here after curfew? Of all of you—Ms. Granger, I expected better of you.”

Hermione’s the one least likely to be immediately shot down, so she steps in front of the rest of them, saying, “I’m sorry, Professor, but we had detention with Hagrid and he just let us out.”

“And he didn’t give you a pass,” McGonagall says, but it sounds more like a statement than a question. “Very well. You’re only a few minutes after curfew, so if you head back to your dormitories _now_ I won’t give you another detention.”

“Actually,” Hermione says, then glances back at the rest of them. “Professor, we—”

“Someone’s going to steal the Philosopher’s Stone,” Harry blurts out, and McGonagall nearly drops her wand.

“I _don’t_ know where you heard about that,” she says sharply, “but it is not something you should be concerning yourself with. Now go to _bed_.”

“Can we talk to Professor Dumbledore?” Harry asks. “Please?”

“It is after curfew,” McGonagall reminds them, “and as it happens, the Headmaster is was called to the Ministry earlier today and will not be returning until at least tomorrow night. But I can assure you, the Stone—which you should not know or be thinking about in the first place—is perfectly safe. Now if you do not go to your dormitories this instant, I will be forced to give all of you detention.”

Harry opens his mouth to keep arguing, but Draco grabs his wrist and tugs him along down the hall, saying, “Thank you, Professor McGonagall,” in maybe the politest tone Harry has ever heard come out of his mouth. Ron and Hermione follow after them, and Harry turns to see McGongall watching them until they turn a corner. They walk down another corridor before Draco stops and says, “Well, that was a waste of time. _Now_ can we go to Snape?”

Harry shakes his head. “We don’t have time.”

Ron frowns at him. “What are you talking about?”

“If Dumbledore’s gone, then whoever it is is going to do it now. If they were going to do it ever, they would do it when the only man Voldemort ever feared is gone.”

They all flinch, and then Ron and Draco glare at each other, and Hermione says, “That’s all the more reason to tell a teacher.”

“But Mrs. McGonagall didn’t listen to us, and Snape hates me, so there’s no way he would listen to me, and he hates Gryffindors, and we’re all only eleven, and even if he did listen to us, what would he do? Tell other Professors? Talk about it? No, we need to deal with it _now_.”

“And do what?” Ron asks.

“We go down there and get it first.”

“But the oaf didn’t tell us how to get past the giant three-headed dog that’s apparently guarding it.”

Harry shrugs. “I can get past Fluffy, I think. And you don’t need to come. You can go back to Slytherin. All of you, you don’t need to come. But I’m going.”

“Harry—”

Harry shakes his head at Hermione. “I’m going. So either come with me or not, but I’m not going to let you stop me.”

“Okay,” Hermione says. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're going to pretend that didn't take me almost three months to write.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unfortunately close to canon, so sorry about that.

Harry’s the one who opens the door to Fluffy’s room, and he smiles when Fluffy gives a low growl and then starts nuzzling his entire chest with the nearest head. Hermione lets out a little scream, then clamps her hand over her mouth.

“You’re a good boy,” Harry tells Fluffy, scratching him behind one ear. Fluffy’s rumble vibrates through Harry’s entire body. “That’s right, you’re a good boy. I need you to let us into the trap door underneath you. Can you do that?”

He doesn’t know if Fluffy understands what he’s saying, but he lets Harry walk him backwards into the room. After a second, Hermione and Ron and Draco squeeze in after him. When Ron pulls open the trapdoor, though, Fluffy growls loudly, teeth in one of his other heads snapping angrily.

“Hey,” Harry says, and reaches towards that head with his free hand to give it a scratch behind the ears, too. “You’re a good dog, yes you are. Sorry I don’t have any steaks for you tonight.”

“That’s a really _big_ dog,” Hermione says, her voice cracking on the second to last word.

Harry gives the third head a scratch, too. “At least _he_ has never bitten me.” Unlike Aunt Marge’s dogs, which are a lot smaller but not nearly as nice.

“I have it open,” Ron says behind him, “but I can’t see what’s down there.”

“I’ll go down first,” Harry says, twisting around to look at him.

But Ron shakes his head. “I’d rather you distract the big terrifying dog until the rest of us are down.” He slides so his legs are hanging down into the hole, then takes in a deep breath and drops down into it. There’s a moment where they’re all holding their breath—even Draco, it looks like, even though he’s trying to look uncaring—and then Ron calls, “It’s all good. It’s not too fall, and I landed on something soft, so it’s okay.”

Hermione climbs in after him, and then Draco says softly, “I want you to know that you’re insane,” before dropping down after him. Finally, Harry gives Fluffy one last scratch before following to climb down into the hole.

He lands on something squishy, with give, which seems good until he looks over and sees vines creeping up everyone’s legs and bodies. He scrambles up, towards the sides, but the vines catch him too, wrapping their way up his body and squeezing. Panic hits him, and he freezes, then starts struggling.

“What is this?” he demands, gasping a little as it starts squeezing its way up his arm.

“Devil’s Snare,” Hermione and Draco say at the same time, and then they glare at each other, which would be funnier if it weren’t for the fact that they were all about to be strangled by a giant plant.

“How do we get _out_ of it?” Harry grits out over the sound of Ron’s panicked breathing.

“Relax,” Hermione says, at the same time Draco says, “Set it on fire.”

“I’d rather we not set it on fire while we’re in it,” Harry tells him. “Can we all—how do we relax before the thing strangles us? Because I’d really like to not be strangled by a plant.”

Ron lets out a hoarse, “Uh huh,” from next to him.

“Just breathe,” Hermione says, her voice high. “If you breathe in through your nose and then hold it and then breathe out longer through your mouth it’ll make you calm down, because I was reading the encyclopedia before I came to Hogwarts and it triggers certain neurons in your brain and—”

“What’s an encyclopedia?” Draco asks, and Hermione sucks in a breath.

Harry laughs a little hysterically. “Can we focus on that after we get out from the strangling plant?” He takes a deep breath, then another, and far too slowly he feels his shoulders relax, and he stops struggling. Just as he thinks the plant is going to close its tendrils around him entirely, it suddenly loosens, and he drops through to the ground.

The fall hurts, but he rolls with it so most of it just impacts his side, which is good when a second later Draco falls through almost where he had landed, followed swiftly by Hermione. But Ron is still up there, struggling and swearing with surprising creativity.

“Just relax,” Hermione shouts up at him, which is met with another litany of curses. Hermione turns frantic eyes on Harry and Draco, saying, “Light, light, I need something to light it up so it’ll let him go. But I don’t have any wood—”

“You’re a witch,” Draco snaps, though he’s also mouthing words like he’s trying to remember spells.

Hermione stares blankly at him for a second, like that never occurred to her, and then she points her wand at the mass of plant above them and says something that sends a mass of blue flames at it.

The vines writhe, recoiling, and a flailing Ron drops through to the ground.

Draco snorts, and Ron rolls to his feet and stalks pointedly towards the next door, not looking at any of them. He stops when he gets to it, though, cocking his head to one side. “It sounds like wings,” he says. “Maybe there are a bunch of birds or something.”

The other three hurry over, and when they get close Harry can hear whirring like the sound of hundreds of birds in a small enclosed space. When he hesitates, Ron yanks open the door and steps into the hallway; he leads them down a short hallway that opens up into a brightly lit, tall chamber.

The birds are all small and high up, so bright that they’re reflecting light like they’re little jewels, but even when they walk into the room, the birds don’t move from where they’re fluttering around near the ceiling.

Across the room is a heavy wooden door. Ron looks at it, then asks, “Do you think they’ll attack us if we get to the other side?”

Harry does. They do, and they’re keys, and Harry would say it’s just like catching a snitch, but keys are irregular and not round, and it bites into his hand as he clings on to it. He can hear his heart in his ears and feel his breathing, harsh in his throat, and there’s nothing here to be scared of but he is, he is as he tosses Draco the key and takes another pass around so the rest of them have time to get everyone else out of the room.

The next room is dark when they walk in, but Harry gets the sense from the echoes that it’s large, maybe larger than the room before. There’s no sound in it, though, no wings or anything else, and he’s about to comment on it when Draco takes a step forward and the whole room lights up.

In front of them is a massive chessboard, with pieces larger than people; closest to them are the black pieces, towering and made of stone, and across the board is another set of pieces in stark white.

Hermione makes a small noise.

“Now what do we do?” Harry asks.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? We’ve got to play our way across the room.”

“How?” Hermione asks.

“I think we’re going to have to—to be chessmen.” Ron glances at Hermione. “Chess pieces.” He rubs a hand across his mouth. “Now don’t be offended or anything, but neither of you are very good at chess, and Malfoy, I have no idea if you can play—”

“We’re not offended,” Harry says quickly, mostly to keep Ron from saying something that will actually offend Draco. “Just tell us what to do.”

Draco opens his mouth, and Harry steps on his foot. Ron is _good_ at chess, and Harry has never seen Draco play, and if this anything like regular wizarding chess, he really wants the best person to play it for them.

“Okay.” Ron hums in thought, then says, “Harry, you take the place of that bishop, and Hermione, you go there instead of that castle. Malfoy, er—you go be the other castle.”

“How about you?”

“I’m going to be the knight.”

Like they were listening, the four pieces Ron indicated slide off of the board, leaving empty spaces for them to fill. They start walking to the spaces, and Ron adds, “Don’t move unless I tell you to. We can’t afford any issues.” Once they’re in their places, he says, “White moves first.”

Sure enough, a white pawn slides forward two spaces.

Ron starts directing the black pieces—and them—and Harry has to stuff his hand in his mouth to not scream like Hermione does when the white queen takes the first black piece by smashing it into the floor and dragging it off the board. Ron responds with some creative swearing, before saying “Okay, none of you can be taken.”

A number of other black pieces are, though, piling up off by the wall. It seems from that that they’re losing, even though Ron takes almost as many white pieces, and he’s stopped swearing.

“We’re nearly there,” Ron mutters suddenly. “Let me think—let me think…” The white queen turns its blank faces towards Ron, and Harry has a sudden sinking feeling, even before Ron says, “It’s the only way—I’ve got to be taken.”

“ _No_ ,” Harry and Hermione shout together, and Draco makes a strangled noise like he starts to say something and then holds it in.

“That’s chess,” Ron snaps. “You’ve got to make sacrifices. I’ll make my move, and then once you take me, you’ll be free to checkmate the king, Harry.”

“But—”

“Do you want to stop him or not?”

“Ron—”

“Look, if we don’t hurry up, he’ll already have the Stone. I’m going to do it.”

There’s no other choice, and Harry can’t stop Ron.

“Ready? Here I go—now don’t hang around once we’ve won, but come back for me eventually.” He steps forward, and the queen darts forward to crack him over the head. He goes down, hard, and is terrifyingly limp when the queen drags him off to one side.

Harry’s pulse thunders in his ears, and he thinks he might throw up. He can take pain, but seeing his friends hurt—

His legs are shaking as he moves the three spaces to the left.

The white king pulls off his crown and tosses it to the ground, and before it’s done bouncing Harry and Hermione are off the board and over to where Ron is. He’s bleeding from the head, with what looks like the very beginning of a black eye, but Harry can see his chest moving, and something in him unclenches a little. Ron is alive.

“We’ll come back for him,” Harry says, forcing him to stand up and move away from Ron. “He’ll be okay. We’ll come back for him.”

“But what if he—”

Harry can’t think about other options. “We’ll come back for him, but we have to go now.”

With one last look at Ron, Hermione pulls away too, and they both hurry to the door, where Draco is waiting impatiently. With a sharp look from Harry, though, he doesn’t say anything, which is good because if he did Hermione would probably punch him in the face.

This door opens to a hallway, at the end of which is yet another door.

“Whose do you think this is?” Harry asks before they open it.

“Professor Quirrell,” Hermione says at the same time Draco says, “Snape.”

With that, Harry opens the door—then promptly closes it, when a troll roars and charges at them.

After a second, Hermione says faintly, “Let’s go back, now. There’s no way for us to get past it.”

“We have to.”

“I,” Hermione says tightly, “would rather not be killed by a troll. Having gone close one, I’m not looking for a repeat, and I’d think you wouldn’t be either. We can’t get past it.”

Draco makes an uncomfortable noise, and Harry glances at him. From the look on his face, Harry thinks he’s going to agree with her, but instead he says, “I can get us past the troll. But you’re not going to like it.”

“Are you going to get hurt, too?”

Draco gives him a startled look, then shakes his head, saying, “No. Just—” He swallows, and then his voice strengthens, and he says, “Open the door and don’t get in my way.”

Harry exchanges a look with Hermione then opens the door and steps out of the way.

Draco levels a shaking wand at the troll, then snaps, “ _Fragor_.” The troll’s neck opens up, spraying graying blood everywhere, and then it drops to the floor. Draco waits until it’s still before swallowing noisily and turning to Harry to say, “Don’t tell Snape I know that.”

Harry doesn’t even know what _that_ was, but it worked, so he shrugs. “Okay.”

“I’m serious, Potter. You can’t tell him.”

“I won’t.”

Hermione turns wide eyes from the troll to him. “What _was_ that?”

Draco shakes his head, heading off towards the door in the other side of the room. Harry and Hermione hurry after him, both of them stepping over the troll, which is still bleeding sluggishly on the floor. Harry just wants to get out of the room, away from the dead troll and the awful smell.

When they open this door, all they see is a table with seven bottles and a piece of paper on it.

“Potions,” Draco says, and strides into the room.

Harry and Hermione are a step behind him, and as soon as they all pass over the threshold, a wall of flames shoot up behind them; they’re purple and dancing in the corner of Harry’s vision. At the same time, a second black set of flames goes up in front of the other door, trapping them inside.

“Look,” Hermione says, stepping up towards the table and picking up the paper on it. Harry and Draco crowd around her, peering down and it and reading what it says.

 _Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,_  
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,  
One among us seven will let you move head,  
Another will transport the drinker back instead,  
Two among our number hold only nettle wine,  
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.  
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,  
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:  
Four, however slyly poison tries to hide  
You will always find some on nettle wine’s left side;  
Second, different are those who stand at either end,  
But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;  
Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,  
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;  
Fourth, the second left and the second on the right  
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.

Just around when Harry finishes reading it, Draco breathes a soft, “What the fuck?”

But Hermione, between them, is smiling, which is amazing, because Harry feels like doing anything but. “Brilliant,” she breathes. “This isn’t magic, really, it’s logic—it’s a puzzle. A lot of brilliant wizards haven’t got an ounce of logic, and they’d be stuck here forever.”

“I’d be stuck here forever,” Harry mutters sullenly, and Draco snorts. Which is a bit hypocritical, considering he hasn’t proposed any suggestions, either.

“How do we know which one to drink?” Draco asks impatiently.

Hermione turns her head like she’s going to glare at him, but her eyes stay focused on the paper. “Give me a minute.”

It takes her more than a minute, and even once she puts it down she doesn’t say anything to either of them, instead muttering to herself, too low for them to catch.

Finally, she says, “The smallest one, that’s the one that’ll get you through the black fire. But there’s only enough for one person.”

Harry swallows. “Which is the other one? The one that’ll let you go back?”

She points to the rounded one at the right end of it. It’s bigger, definitely big enough for two people to drink from it.

“You go,” Harry says. “Both of you. Go back and get Ron to Madam Pomfrey—if you take brooms from the key room, you should be able to get through everything. Then one of you send an owl to Dumbledore, make sure he knows to come back. I’ll try to hold off whoever it is for as long as I can, but I know I won’t be any match for them, so I need you to get help.”

“I’m not letting you go alone,” Draco snaps.

“We can’t both go,” Harry says, “and I’m not going back after everything.” He makes himself smile. “And besides, I survived Voldemort once. I’ll be fine.” Hopefully.

They both stare at him, and then Hermione rushes forward and throws her arms around him. Harry hugs her back, a little startled. “ _Hermione_.”

“You’re a great wizard,” she says into his ear. “And you’re the bravest person I know, House notwithstanding.”

Harry laughs, mostly to cover up his embarrassment as she releases him. “I’m not—you’re better than I am.”

“Yes, yes, we’re all very good wizards,” Draco says impatiently. “If we’re doing this, we should do this.” He looks at Hermione. “Are you sure you know which one is which?”

Hermione rolls her eyes at him. “I’ll drink first, if it makes you feel better.”

She picks up the vial and takes a drink from it, shuddering as she swallows.

“It’s not poison?” Harry asks anxiously.

She shakes her head, making a face. “No, but it’s like ice.”

“Go, then, before it wears off.” He looks at Draco. “You, too. _Go_.”

Draco gulps down the rest of the potion, and then the two of them hurry out through the purple flames, leaving Harry alone in the room. He takes a look at the smallest bottle, then swallows it down and steps through the black flames.

He half expects them to burn him, no matter that Hermione and Draco didn’t react going through the purple flames, but instead it doesn’t feel like anything. Instead, all he can feel is the ice flooding through his veins. He can’t see anything, though, for a long moment, and then he’s through and out into the last chamber.

In the center of the room is a mirror he hadn’t seen in months—and nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That only took...months.
> 
> There are one to two chapters left, depending on how the next one ends up going, and then I will be done with book one!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, too, is unfortunately close to canon, but at least it was quick (considering I wrote almost all of it today instead of doing my readings/essays/PhD applications).

The mirror is cold against Harry’s back.

He’s been staring at the door for a while now, and nobody has come in, and he is not really sure how he’s going to be able to get out, and there’s a small part of him that’s grateful for the Dursleys because he’s hungry but he’s better at ignoring it than Ron or Hermione or Draco would be.

At some point he thinks of something, and he says, “Zonky?”

After a second, Zonky appear in front of him, eyes wide and hands pulling at one long ear. “Harry Potter is not supposed to be here,” she squeaks. “What is Harry Potter doing here? Harry Potter cannot be here.”

Harry shakes his head. “Zonky, can you leave the school?”

Her eyes widen even more. “Zonky is not leaving Hogwarts. Hogwarts is Zonky’s home.”

There goes that plan. “Can you get a message out of the school, then? Someone’s going to come—someone’s going to come try to steal what’s hidden here, and we tried to warn Dumbledore but he’s not here, and McGonagall wouldn’t listen to us, so can you tell Dumbledore that—that’s it’s going to happen?”

Zonky nods frantically. “I can gives message, Harry Potter. I can gives message to Headmaster.”

Relief hits him, and he sags a little. “Thank you, Zonky.”

“Now I is getting you out of here, Harry Potter.”

He shakes his head, skittering back away from her as best as he can when she reaches for him. “No, no, I need to stay here until Dumbledore gets here. Please, Zonky. Please. I’ll do whatever you want, just—if the person gets here before Dumbledore does, I have to stop them, or try to, and Ron got hurt coming here, and I can’t—I can’t leave. Not until Dumbledore gets here. Please.”

Zonky stares at him with narrowed eyes, then says, “Harry Potter is not needing to say please to Zonky. But Zonky is liking that Harry Potter is saying please to Zonky. Zonky is giving message to Headmaster for Harry Potter.”

And then she disappears, and Harry is left alone again in the room with the mirror.

He knows the mirror is the same one as before, the one that shows him his parents, but he hadn’t seen his parents this time, just himself, smiling back at him. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t really want to just stare at himself, and he needs to watch the door.

He sits back against the mirror again, just in time to leap up when the door to the chamber opens once again, and in steps—

Quirrell.

Harry gapes at him, wand going limp in his hand in his surprise. _Quirrell?_ Quirrell, stammering Professor Quirrell, the most cowardly professor in the entire school?

Quirrell smiles at him, taking a few steps towards him. Harry jerks back, until his back is pressed against the mirror and there’s nobody else he can go.

“You,” he blurts out.

“Me,” he says, and Harry has the hysterical thought that this is the first time he’s heard him without a stutter. “I wondered whether I’d be meeting you here, though I must admit, I am surprised that you beat me here. I do appreciate you taking out the troll for me. Such clean work—not what I had expected from you.”

Harry thinks of the troll lying on the ground, grayish blood pouring from its neck and splattered around the room, and shudders.

“I thought,” he says, then stops because he doesn’t know what he thought. Some stranger, somebody who had snuck into Hogwarts, some dark hooded figure like in the forest. Not Professor Quirrell, standing there with a wand clasped in one hand, hands steady. “Were _you_ the one who tried to kill me? With the broom, and—that was _you_? Why did it stop when—Professor Snape caught fire.”

“Your friend Miss Granger broke my eye contact when she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I would have had you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering the countercurse, trying to save you.”

“Snape was—”

“Of course. Why did you think he wanted to referee your next match?” Harry had thought it was just because he wanted to cheat, but that seems rather stupid to say now. “What a waste of time, as well, when I’m just going to kill you today.”

He snaps his fingers, and ropes wrap around Harry, as tightly as the vines had wrapped around him before. He topples over, catching himself on the mirror to keep upright.

“You’re too nosy to live, Potter. Scurrying around the school on Halloween like that, for all knew you’d seen me coming for the Stone.”

“You—that was you, on Halloween?”

“Certainly. I have a gift for trolls. Unfortunately, while everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight for the third floor to head me off. Now wait quietly, Potter, like a good little boy. I have this interesting mirror to examine.” He waves his hand, and Harry skitters a few feet to the side, away from the mirror. He manages to keep his feet, but just barely.

Quirrell strides towards the mirror, eyes fixed on it, and his focus is so intense Harry considers seeing if he can lurch forward and grab Quirrell’s wand from him. He’s tied up too tightly, though, and Quirrell is probably too strong a wizard. It’d make more sense to wait and bide his time, because he’s only going to have one chance.

“The mirror is the key to finding the Stone.” Quirrell strokes a hand over the side of the mirror, tracing the letters on it. “Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this…but he’s in London, and I’ll be far away by the time he gets back.” He begins to tap his way around the mirror. “Of course he would do something so irritating, so…moralizing.”

Desperate to distract Quirrell, even though that’ll make Quirrell focus on him, Harry says, “But Snape—”

“Yes, he was on to me nearly as long as I worked here, the nosy bat. Tried to frighten me, as though he had a chance at that, with Lord Voldemort on my side.”

Harry jerks, then freezes before Quirrell can look at him, but it doesn’t matter, because Quirrell is walking around to the back of the mirror, then back around to the front. Voldemort? This is really Voldemort, here, not some other Dark Lord?

Maybe there is no other Dark Lord. Maybe it’s always Voldemort. Maybe it’s always going to be Voldemort, even though he’s supposed to be gone. Even though he’s been gone.

“I see the Stone,” Quirrell mutters. “I’m presenting it to my master. But where _is_ it? This room is empty, but me and the boy—”

“Snape hates me,” Harry blurts out. “Why would he save me? He hates me.”

“He does,” Quirrell says, voice casual despite the frantic way he’s running his hands along the mirror. “He was at Hogwarts with your father, did you know, and they loathed each other. But he never wanted you _dead_. No, he took up the cause of protecting you, and of course he protects this school, threatening me—and I must admit that I find it hard to follow my master’s instructions, as he is a great wizard, and I am weak—”

Harry would take advantage of Quirrell being distracted now, because this is the most distracted Quirrell will probably ever get, but most importantly, Harry needs to know what he’s talking about. “He was there with you, in the classroom?”

“He is with me wherever I go,” Quirrell says, then goes off ranting about his weakness and how Voldemort needs to punish him for his failure. But he’s truly distracted now, and Harry starts to hop over, slowly, making sure to keep on his feet.

Because this mirror—it shows you when you want, what you want most. And if Harry can look in it, maybe it’ll show him where the Stone is. Because he wants to know where it, he wants to make sure that Voldemort never gets it, because if it brings immortal life, or even longer life, if Voldemort could come back, people will be hurt, people will die, people he cares about, and he’s never had anyone to care about before, and he’s not going to lose them.

It’s not going to happen.

“What do I do, Master?” Quirrell rasps. “What does this mirror do? Help me, please, master, so that I can restore you to your glory.”

Harry doesn’t expect anything from that, so the sound of a voice from Quirrell that is distinctly not Quirrell’s saying, “Use the boy. _Use the boy_ ,” is so startling Harry jerks and tips over sideways, crashing down to the ground. It hurts, a bone-deep crash, because he can’t even catch himself.

Quirrell rounds on him, eyes too high and then darting low to see Harry on the floor. “Yes—Potter—get up, come here.”

With a gesture from Quirrell, the ropes fall away, and Harry climbs to his feet. He steps around to walk to the mirror, and this time when he looks—when he looks at his reflection, male and shaken and shaking—he sees a smile and a wink, and something heavy settles in his pocket. In his real pocket, in real life, and the him in the mirror smiles and pats his pocket.

And that’s about when Voldemort appears, in the back of Quirrell’s bloody skull, under his turban, and Harry thinks he would throw up if he could muster the bile, and Harry is still trying to work through Voldemort talking about his parents’ death when Quirrell is seizing him, and screaming.

Quirrell has him on the ground before he can react, over him with his hands wrapped around Harry’s neck—but before Harry can start to fight back, Quirrell is recoiling back, hands red and shiny like they’re being burned.

“Kill him,” Voldemort snaps from the back of Quirrell’s head. “Kill him, fool, and be done with it, and then you can get the Stone.”

Quirrell raises his wand, and in a fit of panic, Harry lurches forward and smashes his hands over Quirrell’s face, and Quirrell screams and rolls away from him, face blistering, and Harry’s head screams with pain, screams the way Quirrell screams. He can’t be touched, Harry thinks, something that he knew instinctively before he realized it in truth.

And he knows, he knows like he hasn’t known anything else, that if he doesn’t hurt Quirrell, if he doesn’t keep him in pain, Harry will die. So he lunges at Quirrell, pressing both hands to his face, and the pain in his own head explodes as Quirrell shrieks and Voldemort shouts, “Kill him, _kill him_ ,” and Harry can’t breathe through the pain, but Quirrell’s wand is rolling somewhere on the floor and so he can’t kill Harry, and maybe Harry can hold him off until Dumbledore gets there, can keep the Stone away from him, and someone is shouting, “Harry, Harry,” or maybe that’s just in his head, and his head crashes back on the stone floor as Quirrell pulls away from him, and he knows that it’s lost, he’s lost, and maybe it’s better if he dies without having to see what happens.

He falls.

\--

Harry wakes up, which is a surprise.

It’s to whiteness, and the hovering of gold above him, and he blinks and blinks until it resolves a little, from nothing into blurriness, and the blurry face of Professor Dumbledore.

“Good afternoon, Harry,” Dumledore says, and smiles.

Harry blinks at him, because it shouldn’t be the afternoon, it was nighttime—and then he remembers what had been happening, and he bolts upright, saying, “The Stone—Professor, Quirrell, he—he’s got the Stone, you have to get it back, you have to keep him from—Voldemort, he’s in Quirrell, he’s in the back of Quirrell’s head—”

“Calm yourself, dear boy,” Dumbledore says, pressing down on Harry’s shoulder until he sinks back down onto the bed. “You’re a bit behind the times, I’m afraid. Quirrell does not have the Stone.”

“Then who does? Sir—”

“Harry, please relax, or Madam Pomfrey will kick me out, my position notwithstanding. The Stone is safe, I promise, but you must calm yourself.”

Harry finally swallows and settles back, looking around for the first time. He realizes he must be in the hospital wing—and of course, if Madam Pomfrey had threatened to kick Dumbledore out. On one side of the bed is what looks like half a sweetshop piled up on a table.

“Tokens from your many friends and admirers,” Dumbledore says cheerfully. “I’m afraid secrets do not remain as such in a school such as this, and Mister Malfoy has ensured that the entire school has been informed of your bravery. I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley endeavored to send you a toilet seat, though alas it was confiscated due to hygiene reasons.” He smiles. “A pity—I thought it might help cheer you up.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Three days. Miss Granger and Misters Malfoy and Weasley—the youngest, of course—will be most glad to hear that you’ve awakened. They’ve been so very worried.”

This is all very interesting, but Harry has more important concerns. “Sir, the Stone—”

“You’re not easily distracted, I see. The Stones. Yes. Professor Quirrell did not manage to take it from you, and you can thank your own bravery and strength for that. I arrived in time to save you, though I feared I might be too late. The effort to hold him off, it nearly killed.”

“So, Zonky found you, then?”

“Yes, she did, and I really must tell you, my boy, I was most impressed by your ingenuity. Few would think of a house elf in such a situation. Let me ask—how did you think of that?”

Harry shrugs, a little uncomfortable. It was quite a stupid thing to do, now that he’s thinking about it. “I’ve talked to Zonky before, and I thought—well, I thought she could help. And she seems to be able to disappear different places. Though why wouldn’t Quirrell have used a house elf to get the Stone for him, or get him to the mirror, at least? Because Zonky wanted to get me out of there, so I’m assuming they can take people.”

“To use a house elf would never occur to Voldemort, nor to most other wizards. Now to finally answer your question regarding the Stone, it has been destroyed.”

“But your friend—if it’s destroyed, won’t your friend—Nicolas Flamel—”

“Oh, you know about Nicolas?” Dumbledore asks delightedly. “Well done on your research, my boy, though I hope you are not offended if I ask that perhaps it was Miss Granger who was the instigator of that. But don’t concern yourself with that—Nicolas and I had a chat, quite a nice one, and he and Perenelle and I decided it was for the best.”

“But then he’ll die, right? They’ll both die.”

“They do have enough elixir to get their affairs in order, but then yes, they will die.”

Dumbledore sounds so blasé about that, but Harry can’t imagine being so okay with one of his oldest friends dying, just like that, especially when it was something preventable. Harry would do whatever he could to save them.

“It is different to think about for ones as old as Nicolas and Perenelle, or even for myself. After all, to a well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

Harry lays there as Dumbledore continues to talk, staring up at the ceiling. Something isn’t adding up here, with Quirrell and Voldemort and the Stone. Finally, he asks, “Even if the Stone’s gone, Vol—uh, You-Know-Who—”

“Call him Voldemort, Harry. You must always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

Harry wonders why Dumbledore seems to be the only person not afraid of Voldemort, but he doesn’t feel like he should ask. Instead he says, “Yes, sir. Voldemort’s going to try to come back again, isn’t he? He’s going to find other ways. I mean, he hasn’t gone, has he? Not really.”

“No, Harry, he has not. He will find other bodies, I am afraid, or other ways of returning to power. But you have delayed his return to power, perhaps for years—he will have to regroup, to recover. And this is how we will—how we must—protect from him, to delay him again and again.”

Harry nods, which hurts his head, so he stops. “Sir, there are other things I want to know, if you can tell me.”

“I shall answer unless I have a good reason not to, in which case I will have to refrain and hope that you will forgive me. I shall not, of course, lie.”

Harry glances to the side, away from Professor Dumbledore—he doesn’t want to see the look on his face, the pity or anything else, when he asks this. “Do you why Voldemort tried to kill me? The first time, I mean, when I was a baby. Because people say that my mother died to protect me, but to do that—he must have been there for me.”

Harry finally looks back over at Dumbledore when he sighs. “Alas, the first question, and I cannot answer it. Not now, I’m afraid. When you’re older—when you’re ready—I will explain everything to you.”

Harry wants to argue, but he knows that arguing with adults never goes well. Particularly when they have that sort of look on their face. “Why couldn’t Quirrell touch me?” he asks instead.

“Your mother did die to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love, and the strength of that sacrifice, that left a mark on you that he could not break through or stand. She loved you so much, Harry, and that’s why you’re alive today.”

Harry feels tears prick in his eyes, and he closes them and tries not to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one chapter left, and then I'll be done with Book One.


	23. Chapter 23

Draco bursts into the hospital wing just as Dumbledore finishes his explanation of how Harry got the Stone out of the mirror; Ron and Hermione are just behind him, though Hermione looks terrified at the sight of Professor Dumbledore. Draco doesn’t seem to care, though, pitching forward and practically climbing into Harry’s lap in his haste to throw his arms around him.

Dumbledore gives them all an indulgent smile before saying, “I’ll let you catch up with your friends. I recommend you stay quiet, though, or you will draw the ire of Madam Pomfrey.” He winks at Hermione, who turns a dull red, and then he turns and walks out of the hospital wing.

“You’re an idiot and I thought you were going to die,” Draco snaps in his ear, then tightens his arms around Harry so hard it hurts. Hermione is hovering on one side of the bed, Ron perched near her, and both of them are grinning at him. He grins back, then winces when Draco’s grip tightens and his head gives a throb of pain.

“Mate, I’m glad you’re okay,” Ron says. “You’ve been out for three days—we thought you’d never wake up.”

“Madam Pomfrey said he would.”

Ron glances over at Hermione, then says, “We really were worried, I swear.”

Harry grins at him even as Hermione says, “Well, of course I was worried.”

“I was confident in your abilities,” Draco says, even though he just said basically the opposite. Harry doesn’t call it out on it, though, because he’s too happy to be surrounded by his favorite people and to be alive.

“What’s been going on?” Harry asks. “Who’s been teaching DADA?”

“Professor Dumbledore,” Hermione tells him.

“He’s bloody brilliant,” Ron adds. “Knows everything, and at least he doesn’t stutter. And he’s light on homework.”

“He is a good teacher,” Draco admits reluctantly when Harry glances over at him; he finally pulls himself away from Harry to sit on the side of the bed. “Still mad, but even Crabbe and Goyle seem to know what he’s talking about.”

Harry frowns at that. “I don’t actually think Goyle can read. You really think he knows what Dumledore is saying?”

“Professor Dumbledore,” Hermione corrects at the same time Draco says, “He said he did, at least.”

Draco waves a dismissive hand. “Regardless. What _did_ happen to Quirrell? Dumbledore just said he was gone, and it must have to do with you because he disappeared at the same time.”

Harry hesitates, then scrubs his hand across his face and starts to explain. By the time he gets to the end, Hermione looks like she wants to cry, and Draco is about as pale as Ron is red.

“Bloody hell,” Ron breathes finally, turning away to look around the hospital wing like it’s going to give him some answers. “He’s back, then? You-Know-Who?”

“No,” Draco snaps before Harry can say anything.

Harry glances at him, then says, “No, not really. Dumbledore said he’s delayed and weak. But he’ll try to come back again, probably.”

“No,” Draco says again. “No, he’s gone, he’s gone again, just _stop_.”

He sounds a bit hysterical now, so Harry just says, “Okay. Did we all lose a hundred points for what we did? I can’t imagine Snape or McGonagall were too happy with you guys—or, well, us, I guess.”

“Snape wanted to,” Ron tells him, “but Dumbledore overruled him. Said that we got special dispensation for saving the school. I thought Snape was going to throw something at him. Not that Snape ever takes points from Slytherins.”

“He might just give me detention from now until my OWLs.”

And that’s when Madam Pomfrey appears and kicks them out, ordering Harry to rest.

\--

Harry’s not really sure what day it is when Madam Pomfrey lets him go; he can barely tell what time it is, because all of the windows in the hospital wing have curtains over them that seem to block out the changing of the light. He’s not sure what he’s expecting when he leaves—Ron and Hermione and Draco waiting for him, maybe—but instead a furious-looking Professor Snape grabs his upper arm as soon as he’s out of the hospital wing and marches him all the way down to the dungeons. He doesn’t say anything while doing it, but his grip is tight enough to bruise, and he looks almost incandescent in his rage.

His office door slams open with the wave of Snape’s wand, and he drags Harry in before slamming the door behind him. Harry stares at him as he walks over and sits down behind his desk; he’s not sure what Snape’s going to do to him, but he’d rather not provoke anything worse.

“The Headmaster,” Snape grates out finally, “has forbidden me to give you detentions for the rest of your miserable time at this school. I will not be taking points, because he insists that you must be celebrated for your abject foolishness, not punished. I disagree, but he is the Headmaster and I am not.”

Harry blinks at him. That’s not what he expected to hear. Finally, when Snape doesn’t say anything else, Harry says, “Yes, sir.”

“Do not think,” Snape says, standing up behind his desk. He leans forward on it, like he wants to loom over Harry but doesn’t want to get near him. “Do not think that you should take such an action again. Do not think that such idiotic measures were brave or clever or chivalrous. And if you should take such measures again, I will have you scrubbing cauldrons and disemboweling toads until the end of your days. Do you understand me?”

Harry nods again. “Yes, sir.”

“Doing what you did may impress others, because they laud you for being like your father, for being foolish and reckless and uncaring of authority. I am not such a person. Those are not Slytherin traits, Mr. Potter, and while you are one of us, you will comport yourself as one of us.” He stares at Harry for a minute, then says, “Dismissed, Mr. Potter. Get out.”

Harry does.

Prefect Caster finds him next, and she looks pale and a little upset when she leads him away from the crowd of people trying to interrogate him on what happened and to a nearby empty classroom.

She stares at him for a bit before saying anything, and he fidgets and fiddles with the sleeve of his robe because he’s not sure if she’s going to yell at him, too. But finally she says, “I have the paperwork drawn up regarding the Wizengamot seat, if you’re still planning on giving it to me.”

Harry blinks at her. “What?”

“The Potter seat on the Wizengamot. If you still plan for me to take it following the end of this year, the paperwork will need to be finished before we leave. Unless you want me to visit you over the summer.”

“ _No_ ,” Harry blurts out before he can think better of it.

Her expression says she wants to ask, but she doesn’t, which he appreciates. Instead, she says, “Okay,” and pulls out a roll of parchment from under her robe. With a flick of her wand and a muttered spell, it unrolls on a table, staying open like something is pinning down its corners. It’s full of small, dense text, and Harry would need to get closer to actually read it.

On the bottom of the page is a signature with what looks like a smudge of blood next to it, with a space below it.

“This is the form to for you to give me your Wizengamot seat. You’re welcome to read the entire thing, and I’ll give you a copy, but here are some basic points to it.” She gestures towards the top section. “This part here explains that you are the rightful holder of the Potter seat in the Wizengamot, that you’re not yet of age and so can’t sit on the Wizengamot yet, and that your guardians are muggles and so can neither sit on the Wizengamot for you nor appoint a regent for you. It then specifies the statutes that allow you, as a minor sole heir of your line with no acting wizard guardian, to appoint somebody to your seat. Do you have any questions about that?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Moving on, then, the next section is about the terms of service for a regent. Once you come of age and take the seat, the regent’s time on the Wizengamot ends. However, if you choose to delay taking the seat, the regent can continue to serve for as long as you want. That means that, once you come of age, you’re not actually required to take the seat or vote personally if you don’t want to, and you don’t need to appoint someone new. It also says that, at any time, you can remove or replace your regent for any reason. Your regent serves at your pleasure, and if you feel that they’re not representing your interests or you decide you don’t like them, or you find someone better, you are fully within your rights to remove them. Additionally, if your regent actively acts against you, or they work to physically or magically harm you, their seat is automatically forfeit and they may face disciplinary actions. Any questions?”

Harry hesitates, then asks, “Why would you include that, if it means I could remove you?”

Prefect Caster frowns at him. “That’s one of your rights, Harry, regardless of whether it’s written on this paper. And it’s my responsibility to make sure you know this.”

“But if you didn’t tell me, then I wouldn’t know.”

She just keeps staring at him, and he fidgets under her gaze, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong. It seems obvious to him, but she’s looking at him like she has no idea what he’s talking about. Finally, she says, “If I didn’t inform you of your rights—if I didn’t write out everything on the petition or didn’t let you know—and it came out, I would lose the respect of the other seat-holders on the Wizengamot and could even lose the seat. I’m better off letting you know and then making sure I act in your interests rather than trying to hide it from you. Do you understand that?”

After a second, Harry nods. That does make sense to him.

“Good.” She hesitates, then goes on to say, “The next section names me as your regent. It gives some background on me—magical bloodlines three generations back, my position as prefect, my OWLs, and so on. My NEWT scores will automatically be added once they are released. This provides information on me to anybody who wishes to know about me, but particularly people who serve on the Wizengamot.”

“Why would anyone care about your magical bloodlines? That doesn’t—I mean, that doesn’t impact who you are as a person, really. Hermione’s the smartest witch I know, and she’s muggleborn.”

Prefect Caster laughs. “You do know Draco Malfoy, right, snakelet? To old families, blood is what matters—you could be a mass murderer, but as long as you have the right bloodline, they’ll still consider you acceptable for marriage. People knew Bellatrix Lestrange was mad far before she left school, but she’s a Black, so a Lestrange was perfectly happy to marry her.” Harry has no idea who she’s talking about, but now doesn’t seem like the time to ask. “And remember, the seats are tied to pureblood lines. You’re only getting this seat because of your magical bloodlines. So for better or for worse, that’s how it works.”

Harry drags a hand through his hair. He doesn’t like it, but there’s nothing he can do about it. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”

At that, she points to the last line, the signature. “Right here, I signed it, and next to it you can see some blood. My blood. This is special petition parchment, which is made to record the magical signature of blood. Because I put my blood on it, it recorded that I’m one of the petitioners associated with this petition. Once you sign it and put your blood on it, it’ll record your magical signature as that of the other petitioner. Because your magical signature is associated with the seat, it will automatically be filed and approved once you put your blood on it. Which, if you don’t have any problems with or questions about the petition, you can do now.”

Harry nods, and she hands him an Ever-Inking Quill for him to use to sign it. His signature looks messier than hers, but it’s recognizably his name, at least, which is good. Once he’s handed back the quill, she says, “Give me your hand.”

Once he gives her his hand, with a quick flick of her wand she opens up a small cut on his finger; once blood wells up in it, she turns his hand and places it down on the paper next to his signature.

For some stupid reason, he expects it to glow or do something else magical, but instead the paper just sits there, and she heals up his finger and lets go of his hand.

“There.” Prefect Caster rolls up the parchment and sticks it back in her robes, then sits back in her seat. “We’ve already discussed your first order of business, fighting to allow children to take potions to adjust their bodies to the correct sex without parental permission. Now I’d like to talk to you a bit more about what else you’re particularly interested in—what you care about, what you do or don’t want to happen. I’m not expecting you to be familiar with everything, but I do need to get a feel for what you care about so I know what specifically to pay attention to and who to engage with.”

Harry nods, and they get started.

\--

Packing up his stuff makes Harry’s chest ache a little. They’ve ended up sprawled around, somewhat, more than ever before in his life, and he actually has to hunt for a pair of socks and some spare parchment that found its way under his bed. He’s never had enough stuff to lose any of it before.

Even with the new stuff he’s acquired, fitting everything in his trunk is easy, unlikely Draco and the rest of the Slytherin boys, who all have to have upperclassmen shrink their stuff so it fits. Harry doesn’t know how that would work for muggleborns, because they couldn’t have anyone unshrink it when they got home, but maybe they have enough stuff that they don’t need to wear what’s in their trunk over the summer.

But the idea of leaving, of going back to the Dursleys, feels awful. For the first time in his life, he’s found somewhere that feels like home, with people he likes, and now he’s going to have to go to Surrey for months.

Draco flops down on the bed next to him, draping his legs over Harry’s; Harry startles and almost pokes him in the face with his wand before he catches himself. “Stop moping,” Draco tells him. “Yes, it’s awful that you need to go back to your muggles, but you can just owl us. And it’s only a few months.”

“They’re not my muggles,” Harry says stiffly, wriggling away because Draco’s legs feel claustrophobic, like they’re holding him down and blocking him in. Draco scowls at him.

“They’re the muggles you live with—they’re your muggles. Will you stop moving?”

“Will you stop touching me?” Harry snaps back.

Draco stills, then scowls at him. “What’s wrong with you? You’re going home, not to Azkaban. Relax.”

Harry rolls off his bed so Draco can’t see whatever is on his face, because he doesn’t want to explain to Draco how awful the idea going back to the Dursleys is. Because Draco won’t get it, and he’ll think it’s about muggles when it’s really about the Dursleys, and Harry just doesn’t want to have that conversation. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, and his voice is a little sharper than he had intended, but he can’t help that. He _doesn’t want to talk about it._

Draco stares at him, then says, “Okay, fine, whatever.”

\--

Harry is waylaid by Ron and Hermione on the way to the Hogwarts Express, and he ends up in a cabin with the two of them. He’s not sure where Draco is, probably in a cabin with Crabbe and Goyle—who he goes to when he’s annoyed at Harry, because they never argue with him and listen to everything he says and frankly aren’t intelligent enough to produce an idea in opposition to him—and likely with Blaise and Theo as well. And it bothers Harry that Draco doesn’t come find him, but he supposes he doesn’t go find him either, but he knows Draco is annoyed at him, so he doesn’t want to bother him.

And Ron and Hermione are enough for him for the train ride, and it’s good to be able to see them before he’s going to be stuck with the Dursleys for a summer.

“If you send me Hedwig,” Hermione tells him after they finish changing into muggle clothes, as the train nears Kings Cross, “I can send you a letter back with her.” She frowns. “I could send you regular mail, if you want, that might be easier. Just give me your address, and I’ll—”

Imagining the Dursleys’ responses if he gets mail from anyone, he blurts out, “No, that’s okay. Don’t—I’ll send Hedwig.”

“Are you sure?” She pulls out a piece of parchment and a quill. “It’s no trouble, to send you mail, and you can send Hedwig to people who don’t know how the mail works.” She glances over at Ron, who shrugs. “It’s really no trouble, Harry.”

“No, I—” Harry makes a face. “The Dursleys won’t like me getting mail, I don’t think, especially not from, you know, wizards. Witches. They probably wouldn’t let me keep it.”

Hermione eyes him for a moment, then says, “Okay, if you’re sure. But don’t wait too long to write. I want to hear from you.”

“Yeah,” Ron says. “Maye not as much as Hermione wants you to write, but—” Hermione hits his arm, and he grins at her. “I’m just saying, you’re probably looking for a dissertation, and I’ll settle for, you know, words.”

Harry laughs. “I’ll try for somewhere in between. And you two write me, too. I’m going to go spare, stuck alone at the Dursleys.”

“You’ll get a chance to do all of your homework early,” Hermione says cheerfully. “I’ve already started mine, of course—not all of it, I haven’t gotten a chance, but I’m partway through the essay for Potions, and—”

“No,” Ron says loudly. “We just got out of school, we’re not going to talk about it right now. If I have to look at another piece of bloody Potions theory—”

“And this is why you never finish your homework on time.”

“It’s been less than a day,” Ron protests. “That doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it, just that I’m sane enough not to want to talk about it right now.”

“What about you?” Hermione asks, and they both turn in unison to look at Harry, who raises his hands in his air.

“I’m not getting between you,” he tells them.

Looking disappointed, Hermione turns to look back out the window, and Ron grins at Harry once she’s not looking. Harry grins back. He’s going to miss them, this summer. But at least they’ll write, and he won’t be totally alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END OF BOOK ONE.
> 
> It'll probably be a while before I start posting book 2, but I'll try to get the beginning up within a month. I'll have a lot of travel in the next couple months, so I'll try to get as much writing as I can done during that time.
> 
> Thanks for being on this journey with me.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be updated every Sunday. Theoretically.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [will truly be free](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12585608) by [elumish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish)




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